Right now it reads like one example of the pledged funding being met, one example of it being only being ca. 3⁄4 met but there’s also two years left until the original deadline, and one example of the funding never getting pledged in the first place (since congress didn’t pass it).
I agree this is a pitifully small investment. But it doesn’t seem like big bills and programs got created and then walked back. More like they just never came to be in the first place. 4.5 billion euros is a paltry sum.
I think this may be an important distinction to make, because it suggests there was perhaps never much political push to prepare for the next pandemic even at the time. Did people actually ‘memory hole’ and forget, or did they just never care in the first place?
I for one don’t recall much discussion about preparing for the next pandemic outside rationalist/EA-adjacent circles even while the Covid-19 pandemic was still in full swing.
Right now it reads like one example of the pledged funding being met, one example of it being only being ca. 3⁄4 met but there’s also two years left until the original deadline, and one example of the funding never getting pledged in the first place (since congress didn’t pass it).
I agree this is a pitifully small investment. But it doesn’t seem like big bills and programs got created and then walked back. More like they just never came to be in the first place. 4.5 billion euros is a paltry sum.
I think this may be an important distinction to make, because it suggests there was perhaps never much political push to prepare for the next pandemic even at the time. Did people actually ‘memory hole’ and forget, or did they just never care in the first place?
I for one don’t recall much discussion about preparing for the next pandemic outside rationalist/EA-adjacent circles even while the Covid-19 pandemic was still in full swing.