EA - ProMED, platform which alerted the world to Covid, might collapse - can EA donors fund it? by freedomandutility

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: ProMED, platform which alerted the world to Covid, might collapse - can EA donors fund it?, published by freedomandutility on August 5, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum."The early warning disease network that alerted the world to the original SARS outbreak and the start of the Covid-19 pandemic appears to be in peril.""In February 2003, it was ProMED that alerted the world to the fact that a new disease that caused pneumonia had started to spread in China's Guangdong province. That disease became known as SARS - severe acute respiratory syndrome. In September 2012, an Egyptian doctor working in Saudi Arabia wrote to ProMED to reveal he had treated a patient who died from pneumonia triggered by a new coronavirus, a camel virus we now know as MERS - Middle East respiratory syndrome. Just before midnight on Dec. 30, 2019, a ProMED "RFI" post - request for information - was the first warning the outside world received of a fast-growing outbreak in Wuhan, China. That was the start of the Covid-19 pandemic."""In its post dated July 14, the ISID revealed it had been having trouble raising the money needed to sustain ProMED. A fundraising drive that aimed for $1 million brought in $20,000. "To put it frankly, ProMED is in dire financial straits," the post said."This doesn't seem very expensive to sustain, and losing ProMED would be a step backwards when we're aiming for an effective global early warning system - surely a group of EA donors could save ProMED?You can directly donate here -/ but it might make sense to get in touch with ProMED before making large donations.Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org