Giving Compass' Take:

· The Centre for Effective Altruism shares the thoughts of Dr. Crystal Watson regarding Global Catastrophic Biological Risks and how you can get involved. 

· How can effective altruists support efforts addressing global catastrophic biological risks? 

· Here's how to prevent global catastrophic biological risks.

Prior to 1977, when he had the last case of smallpox in nature, the disease was endemic to many parts of the world. Even when smallpox had been eliminated from some places like the United States, it was still killing about 2 million people a year before eradication began. And even in the US, as late as 1947, when there was an introduction of a case from somewhere else in the world, it was a huge problem. In 1947, there was one imported case in New York City, which resulted in just a handful of secondary cases. That exposure resulted in the vaccination of about 2.5 million people, to give an idea of what a problem this was.

Read the full article about assessing global catastrophic biological risks at The Centre for Effective Altruism.