Thread by @VitalikButerin

Last year @CryptoRelief_ led by @sandeepnailwal allocated $100m to Covid research projects I wanted to fund

Sandeep and I discussed and jointly concluded these and other projects are high-impact and need follow through grants. Hence we decided to put $100m more to these projects

This will be done under my entity Kanro with its multisig

etherscan.io/address/0xB360…

where @CryptoRelief_ and I are going to disburse the funds to.

Covid and future pandemics are a global problem that requires a global solution combining frontier scientific innovation and on-the-ground implementation all over the world.

Work in India continues to be a key part of the solution, but we also need an integrated global approach.

We need to find public health solutions that respect people's rights and freedoms, are widely accessible, and ensure that we not only stay alive and healthy but have enjoyable lives that are worth living.

For us, this means:

1. A commitment to insist on maximal viable open-source for anything we fund
2. A focus on solutions that depend not on radical behavior change, but on medical and infrastructure work, behind-the-scenes but nevertheless transparent and open to public scrutiny

A particular focus is on indoor air quality. #CovidIsAirborne, so a focus on airborne transmission is a necessary part of a long-term solution to both Covid and many other pandemics. This includes improving ventilation, HEPA filtering, and experimental tech like UVC irradiation.

The most salient risks from Covid today are the very high number of people experiencing very-long-term symptoms (aka #LongCovid), and so Long Covid research continues to be a primary focus.

The research thus far, including on cryptic lineages and wastewater studies, strongly suggests we should be looking at viral persistence as the deep cause of Long Covid.

I'm really happy @sandeepnailwal and @CryptoRelief_ share this view and have agreed that supporting this new initiative also serves to further the core mission of CRI. @CryptoRelief_ has put in 90M USDC from the original $SHIB donation, and I'm adding another 10M of my own funds.

We look forward to ongoing collaboration between our teams and our networks. Covid won't end on its own, and there continues to be ongoing risk that the pandemic/hyperendemic will return to a more acute state:

nature.com/articles/s4157…

Pandemics beyond Covid continue to be a large risk in the 21st century. We look forward to continuing our efforts to better live with airborne viruses and eventually live without them.

We can do the work to understand, prevent, and cure (Long) Covid.

And we can stop airborne pathogens with clean air the same way that we stopped cholera over 100 years ago with clean water.