David Manheim on Pandemic Preparedness and Vaccine Challenge Trials

David Manheim on Pandemic Preparedness and Vaccine Challenge Trials

Show Notes

00:00-01:40 | Introduction

01:41-12:30 | David's Background
David talks on a high-level about the work and research he has done over the past few years, and expands upon how he sees it developing in the years ahead. What role has forecasting played? Pandemic preparedness and vaccine challenge trials

12:31-49:25 | Vaccine Development, Pandemic Preparedness, Challenge Trials
What is the likelihood that countries develop and invest the necessary resources over the next few years to develop safe and effective vaccines within 100 days? What are human challenge trials and why are the beneficial? What is the best-faith argument against them?

49:26-57:44 | Forecasting in Government
In an ideal world, what would forecasting adoption in government look like? What is the current reality? And how we can improve the situation?

57:45-1:06:37 | Rapid Fire Forecasts + Outro

And we're back! Welcome everyone to the eighteenth episode of the Global Guessing Weekly Podcast, the podcast on all things geopolitics and forecasting. Today we are joined by GG alum David Manheim, lead researcher for the human challenge trial advocacy group 1DaySooner who previously appeared on The Right Side of Maybe to discuss his accuracy in forecasting Covid vaccines.

David received a PhD in Public Policy from Pardee Rand Graduate School focusing on risk analysis and decision theory. He has done work on a variety of grants and contracts to research existential risk mitigation, public health, computational modelling, and infectious disease epidemiology for organizations such as the RAND Corporation. In addition to his work with 1DaySooner, David currently works with the Foresight Institute, is a Superforecaster with Good Judgement Inc., and recently became a visiting professor at the Israel Institute of Technology "working to build interdisciplinary collaborations with technical researchers on the promises and risks of emerging technologies."

In this episode, you'll hear David talk about his work in biosecurity including the recent report he worked on for the Council on Strategic Risks, a US think tank, and his work with 1DaySooner on human challenge trials to learn how this change in vaccine testing could save millions of lives. We also chatted with David about the role that quantified forecasting currently plays in government policy and discuss why the technique is under-utilized. Finally, we get David’s thoughts on real-money prediction markets and the importance of question-quality in both prediction markets and platforms.

Note: This episode was recorded on July 29th.

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