The risk of extinction from pandemics is substantial – as high as 10% -- you should prioritize reducing bio-risks

Overall, the risk seems substantial We’ve seen a variety of estimates regarding the chances of an existential biological catastrophe, including the possibility of engineered pandemics.17 Perhaps the best estimates come from the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (XPT). This project involved getting groups of both subject matter experts and experienced forecasters to estimate the likelihood of extreme events. For biological risks, the range of median estimates between forecasters and domain experts were as follows: Catastrophic event (meaning an event in which 10% or more of the human population dies) by 2100: ~1–3% Human extinction event: 1 in 50,000 to 1 in 100 Genetically engineered pathogen killing more than 1% of the population by 2100: 4–10%18 Note: the forecasters tended to have lower estimates of the risk than domain experts. Although they are the best available figures we’ve seen, these numbers have plenty of caveats. The main three are: There is little evidence that anyone can achieve long-term forecasting accuracy. Previous forecasting work has assessed performance for questions that would resolve in months or years, not decades. There was a lot of variation in estimates within and between groups — some individuals gave numbers many times, or even many orders of magnitude, higher or lower than one another.19 The domain experts were selected for those already working on catastrophic risks — the typical expert in some areas of public health, for example, might generally rate extreme risks lower. It’s hard to be confident about how to weigh up these different kinds of estimates and considerations, and we think reasonable people will come to different conclusions. Our view is that given how bad a catastrophic pandemic would be, the fact that there seems to be few limits on how destructive an engineered pandemic could be, and how broadly beneficial mitigation measures are, many more people should be working on this problem than current are. Reducing catastrophic biological risks is highly valuable according to a range of worldviews Because we prioritise world problems that could have a significant impact on future generations, we care most about work that will reduce the biggest biological threats — especially those that could cause human extinction or derail civilisation. But biosecurity and catastrophic risk reduction could be highly impactful for people with a range of worldviews, because: Catastrophic biological threats would harm near-term interests too. As COVID-19 showed, large pandemics can bring extraordinary costs to people today, and even more virulent or deadly diseases would cause even greater death and suffering. Interventions that reduce the largest biological risks are also often beneficial for preventing more common illnesses. Disease surveillance can detect both large and small outbreaks; counter-proliferation efforts can stop both higher- and lower-consequence acts of deliberate misuse; better PPE could prevent all kinds of infections; and so on. There is also substantial overlap between biosecurity and other world problems, such as global health (e.g. the Global Health Security Agenda), factory farming (e.g. ‘One Health‘ initiatives), and AI.