2021: Virtual meetups

Collective Research

2021-08-26

This meeting will be about curiosity and collective research! We had so much fun collectively googling for answers to questions at the end of the June meetup that we’ve decided to do a whole meetup structured around shared speed-research. Here’s how it will work:

• Gather in a gather.town space (link will be sent out the week before).
• Take 5 minutes to write down biosecurity-related questions that we feel like we ought to know the answers to.
• Split into groups based on interest and research the questions for 20 - 30 minutes.
• Come back together and present what we’ve learned.

Here are some questions proposed by the organizers, though we’ll use the first 5 minutes to do extra brainstorming:

• What are some historical benefits of gain of function research with potential pandemic pathogens?
• Which terrorist groups are most likely to be interested in pursuing catastrophic biological risks?
• What exactly does California’s gene synthesis screening law require? Is it helping?
• Who has done red-teaming for biosecurity? How successful were they?
• What are some historical examples of agricultural bioterrorism (similar to the 1989 California medfly attack)?

Lightning talks on recent pandemic preparedness funding / R&D plans

2021-07-01

This time we’ll have lightning talks on recent pandemic preparedness funding / R&D plans!

• Brian Wang will present the Apollo Program for Biodefense.
• Jeffrey Ladish will present some sequence screening proposals, drawing on the Centre for Long Term Resilience Future Proof report.
• Tessa Alexanian will present the CEPI End Pandemics Investment Case.

Talk: What’s the point of dual-use risk assessments?

2021-05-20

What’s the point of dual-use risk assessments? – Tessa Alexanian

Tessa will talk through several frameworks for dual-use risk assessments, trying to map out who the frameworks were designed for, and what kinds of post-assessment actions the frameworks assume to be available.

Along the way, she’ll touch upon some of her questions about dual-use risk assessment, such as: do the benefits of research matter when assessing dual-use concerns? When is the right time to assess a project for dual-use concerns? What, exactly, falls under “dual-use”, anyway―particular pathogens? Gain-of-function experiments? Anything with pandemic potential? Anything with misuse potential? Let’s explore uncertainties together!

Talk: Policy Interventions for State vs. Non-State Actors

2021-04-15

Policy Interventions for State vs. Non-State Actors – Dr. Steph Guerra

Steph will give a short presentation on biorisk concerns related to state versus non-state actors, and then host a brainstorming session where the group will discuss the perceived biosecurity impacts of state versus non-state actors, run through a list of biosecurity policies, examine how these policies would address state versus non-state actors, and think through how this might influence our relative prioritization of biosecurity policies.

Steph also recommended a paper from Cassidy Nelson and Anders Sandberg as a (not mandatory, but useful) pre-read: Who Should We Fear More: Biohackers, Disgruntled Postdocs, or Bad Governments? A Simple Risk Chain Model of Biorisk (PDF link).

Speed Meeting

2021-03-18

Since this is the second instance of EBBS this year, it would be nice to get to know each other better. So come prepared to talk about something in biosecurity you’re excited about, something you’re working on, or just something you’d enjoy talking about! We’ll be using the Gather Town platform rather than Zoom so it’ll be easier to have one-on-one conversations.

Here are the slides from Ajay and Jeffrey’s Biosurveillance in the post-COVID age talk, and the links from the talk: a NYT article on the reporting failures in the early pandemic response; ProMED Mail, an email list for tracking new disease outbreaks; and BlueDot, a service that aggregates data from ProMED and other sources.

Talk: Biosurveillance in the post-COVID age

2021-02-25

Biosurveillance and Pandemic Prevention in the Post-COVID World – Jeffrey Ladish and Ajay Karpur

It seems likely that SARS-CoV-2 won’t be the last virus with pandemic potential. What would it take to prevent a similar global outbreak in the future? A promising direction is the development of cheap and easy-to-use sequencing platforms for use in clinical settings to sequence and identify new pathogens with pandemic potential. If these platforms could become cheap enough, they might be deployed globally to greatly enhance disease surveillance. However, COVID-19 demonstrates that detection of emerging pathogens isn’t enough, and that systems to ensure the early international reporting of suspected emerging pathogens are a necessary component of a disease surveillance system.

Catalyst Reunion

2021-02-20

The event schedule was (all times in Pacific):

• 1:45pm: virtual doors open
• 2:00pm-3:45pm: alternating 15-minute discussions between Catalyst speakers (Megan Palmer, Josh Batson, Jassi Pannu, Tara Kirk Sell, and Anders Sandberg) and 15-minute breakout conversations
• 3:45pm-5:00pm: reception with themed discussion tables and general mingling

Questions given to speakers:

• How did your work change as a result of the pandemic?
• What surprised you most about the COVID-19 pandemic response? What did you get wrong?
• What is one important lesson from the COVID-19 response to apply to future pandemics?
• What is one incorrect lesson you think people are drawing from COVID-19 response? (for example, lessons that won’t generalize to future pandemics)
• What is your hottest pandemic take (that you feel comfortable sharing)?
• Do you think COVID-19 has made the world more or less secure from future biothreats?
• What has made you feel excited or optimistic (in a way related to biosecurity or pandemic preparedness) over the past year?
• What do you think about investigations into the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin?
• In light of COVID-19, how do you think public health officials should think about and communicate the trade-offs between health security and other societal priorities (e.g. economic well-being, education, freedom) in future pandemics?
• What have been some unexpectedly useful skillsets in the biosecurity space this past year? What skillsets do you think might become unexpectedly useful in future?
• Based on the different pandemic responses tried by various countries, what are some broad public health strategies that you think worked well? Didn’t work well?
• Where do you most want new funding to go for better pandemic response in the future?

The platform we used, Gather, uses a proximity chat; you could hear speakers from anywhere in the main room, but otherwise only people whose avatars were nearby were audible. We had themed discussion tables in Gather Town around the following ideas:

• Environmental Biosecurity
• BWC & International Policy
• Investigating Pandemics (Surveillance, WHO, etc.)
• Ethics of Pandemic Response (Freedom, Privacy, Safety, etc.)
• COVID Chat (hosted by Counter Culture Labs)
• Communication, Disinformation