80,000 Hours's video: 4 - Howie Lempel on pandemics that kill hundreds of millions and how to stop them

What disaster is most likely to kill more than 10 million human beings in the next 20 years? Terrorism? Famine? An asteroid? Actually it’s probably a pandemic: a deadly new disease that spreads out of control. We’ve recently seen the risks with Ebola and swine flu, but they pale in comparison to the Spanish flu which killed 3% of the world’s population in 1918 to 1920. A pandemic of that scale today would kill 200 million. In this in-depth interview I speak to Howie Lempel, who spent years studying pandemic preparedness for the Open Philanthropy Project. We spend the first 20 minutes covering his work at the foundation, then discuss how bad the pandemic problem is, why it’s probably getting worse, and what can be done about it. Transcript and links to learn more on the episode page: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/we-are-not-worried-enough-about-the-next-pandemic/ In the second half we go through where you personally could study and work to tackle one of the worst threats facing humanity. Originally released August 23rd, 2017 **Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app.** Check out all our episodes here: https://80000hours.org/podcast/ *The 80,000 Hours podcast is produced by Keiran Harris.*