I’ve gone through a lot of introductions to this post but maybe this is the most honest one:

I am scared. Quite scared, actually. My chances of catching COVID-19 are actually quite low, and my chances of surviving it if I do are quite high, and I’m still scared. What if I get into a car accident and have to go to the ER? Will they have a bed for me? Will I leave with coronavirus? What are my pregnant friends going to do? What is anyone over 70 going to do?

My goal, and the goal of everyone on the LW staff, and I assume most everyone who’s participated in all the coronavirus threads, has been to figure out what is happening and what we can do about it. We’ve already done a lot. Posts like Seeing the Smoke got coronavirus on people’s radar faster than it otherwise would have been, aided by the numerous modeling threads backing it up. The Quarantine Preparations thread gave people a starting place to act from. The Justified Practical Advice (summary) thread let us share our expertise, in ways that led to concrete behavioral changes. More recently we examined asymptomatic transmission. I’ve had a legit, reasonably high ranking government official say they look at us to see where everyone else will be in weeks.

This is currently the LessWrong team’s top priority, and they’ve done a number of things over the recent weeks to facilitate research and action on coronavirus, including hiring me to be a point person on it. To facilitate as much progress as possible over the coming weeks, habryka and I have compiled a list of what we consider the most important questions in fighting COVID, and are asking anyone with the skill to help us answer them.

That list is at the end of this post. But first, what is the overall plan here?

Who are we trying to help?

We have three broad categories of potential beneficiaries in mind:

Individuals making choices for themselves and their loved ones, who need accurate information about the current threat level and how to lower it with existing tech.
Individuals creating the tools for the people above, meaning anything from noticing that copper tape is anti-viral to creating plans for DIY non-invasive ventilators, who need accurate information about how COVID-19 operates and where the current gaps and bottlenecks are. We’d like to help people in this group get volunteers and money

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