Does taking extreme measures to avoid the coronavirus make sense when you factor in the possibility of a really long life?

Adam Zerner

4

[ Question ]

Does taking extreme measures to avoid the coronavirus make sense when you factor in the possibility of a really long life?

by Adam Zerner

5th Jun 2020

1 min read

2 2

4

Some back of the napkin math. Suppose we:

Value a QUALY at $50k.
Use an expected lifespan of 10k years. Perhaps you expect a 1% chance of living 1M years due to the possibility of a friendly superintelligence or something.

That would mean:

The value of your life would be $500M.
A 1% chance of death would cost $5M.
A 100x smaller chance of death of 0.01% would cost $50k.
Decreasing your chance of death 100x would be worth ~$5M.

There seem to be various ways to decrease your chance of death from the coronavirus by 100x or more by going from "normal careful" to extremely careful.