3 ms·

The first thing I did back in February with the Coronavirus was figure out how much coming down with it would increase my yearly exposure to micromorts (it doub

The first thing I did back in February with the Coronavirus was figure out how much coming down with it would increase my yearly exposure to micromorts (it doubled it). That was good for figuring out how afraid I should be compared to other sources of danger in my life.

buhhh 6y ago
That's great and all but did you also consider your impact on others? Also, I sincerely doubt you were able to get an accurate picture of risk in February.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  There are ways to figure that out based on average infection chains and risk, and I've done this for flu. But you couldn't do that now with available information. The value you'd get is highly dependent on the R_naught (which you can get a reasonable guess of right now) and the percentage of the population which ultimately gets infected. (Which is a much more uncertain value.)
- Symmetry 6y ago
  Oh, I wasn't really thinking about my impact on others until I was considering whether to go to MODEX early in March. But early estimates of SARS-2 lethality from February have stood up pretty well even if we didn't understand many of the mechanisms at the time. For instance at the time I was very worried about Covid-19's effect on the brain and had no idea that clotting could be an issue.
- teeray 6y ago
  That is an interesting limitation of micromorts in this context—-they’re kind of statistically focused on the individual. I wonder if there’s some similar measure where we could basically treat everyone as slightly radioactive. Entering an enclosed space would reduce the maximum separation of everyone and increase the minimum possible exposure (and by consequence, everyone’s chance of death). Since we’d then have a useful quantity to measure and track, we could then do accounting with our risk of death by COVID-19 (i.e. “I’m not going to the store today because I’m over my exposure limit for the week”)
jjice 6y ago
How did you go about calculating that? Did you just use the deaths / population measure that the Wikipedia article mentions, or was it trickier than that? Sounds like a "fun" way to calculate risk.
biolurker1 6y ago
You operated on completely unknown information. Still now we have ni clue about long term consequences even on very mild cases
clairity 6y ago
"doubled" sounds ominous. twice tiny is still tiny. for instance, flying 100 times/year (100 times tiny risk) is hardly riskier than flying once (tiny risk). most people don't even give that risk a second thought. many common events can double risks (or more).

buhhh 6y ago

That's great and all but did you also consider your impact on others? Also, I sincerely doubt you were able to get an accurate picture of risk in February.

Enginerrrd 6y ago
There are ways to figure that out based on average infection chains and risk, and I've done this for flu. But you couldn't do that now with available information. The value you'd get is highly dependent on the R_naught (which you can get a reasonable guess of right now) and the percentage of the population which ultimately gets infected. (Which is a much more uncertain value.)
Symmetry 6y ago
Oh, I wasn't really thinking about my impact on others until I was considering whether to go to MODEX early in March. But early estimates of SARS-2 lethality from February have stood up pretty well even if we didn't understand many of the mechanisms at the time. For instance at the time I was very worried about Covid-19's effect on the brain and had no idea that clotting could be an issue.
teeray 6y ago
That is an interesting limitation of micromorts in this context—-they’re kind of statistically focused on the individual. I wonder if there’s some similar measure where we could basically treat everyone as slightly radioactive. Entering an enclosed space would reduce the maximum separation of everyone and increase the minimum possible exposure (and by consequence, everyone’s chance of death). Since we’d then have a useful quantity to measure and track, we could then do accounting with our risk of death by COVID-19 (i.e. “I’m not going to the store today because I’m over my exposure limit for the week”)

jjice 6y ago

How did you go about calculating that? Did you just use the deaths / population measure that the Wikipedia article mentions, or was it trickier than that? Sounds like a "fun" way to calculate risk.

biolurker1 6y ago

You operated on completely unknown information. Still now we have ni clue about long term consequences even on very mild cases

clairity 6y ago

"doubled" sounds ominous. twice tiny is still tiny. for instance, flying 100 times/year (100 times tiny risk) is hardly riskier than flying once (tiny risk). most people don't even give that risk a second thought. many common events can double risks (or more).