Chamath @ 00:08:39Wrong
health
By roughly May 2022, COVID-19 will be “well in hand” globally or at least in the US, due to the availability of effective therapeutics and/or vaccines, such that it is no longer a major uncontrolled public health crisis.
I think that, um, we will have this pandemic or this disease, uh, well in hand And within two years. And so whether it's a combination of a therapeutic and a vaccine or just a therapeutic, um, I just think that we're going to kick its ass.View on YouTube
Explanation
Chamath’s timeline and mechanism were partly right (vaccines and therapeutics did arrive by late 2020–2021), but his overall prediction that COVID-19 would be “well in hand” within two years—such that it was no longer a major uncontrolled public health crisis—did not hold by May 2022.
By the two‑year mark:
- Effective tools did exist. Multiple vaccines were widely deployed globally and in the U.S., and the first oral antiviral, Paxlovid, received FDA emergency use authorization in December 2021, providing a convenient treatment that reduces risk of hospitalization and death. (fda.gov)
- However, the World Health Organization repeatedly reaffirmed that COVID-19 still constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). In April 2022 and again in July 2022, WHO’s Emergency Committee unanimously agreed the pandemic remained an “extraordinary event” that continued to adversely affect global health and required a coordinated international response. (who.int)
- WHO did not declare an end to the global COVID-19 PHEIC until May 5, 2023, almost a year after Chamath’s two‑year window. (paho.org)
- In the United States, the CDC reported a 7‑day average of about 273 deaths per day as of May 11, 2022, with nearly 1,000,000 cumulative deaths, indicating that COVID-19 was still causing substantial mortality. (archive.cdc.gov) The U.S. federal COVID public health emergency was only allowed to expire on May 11, 2023. (sciencenews.org)
Because by May 2022 COVID-19 was still officially treated as a global and U.S. public health emergency with hundreds of deaths per day in the U.S., it had not become “well in hand” in the sense of no longer being a major uncontrolled public health crisis. Therefore, the prediction is best scored as wrong overall.