If anything, I wonder if one would prefer to get exposed earlier rather than later.

Of course, my wife works in a hospital in Santa Clara.

Sadly, the paper is in Chinese, but you would probably want to look at the percentage of non-mild cases in your age bracket and adjusted for your pre-existing condition risk to see how your actual risk might be modeled: http://rs.yiigle.com/yufabiao/1181998.htm

But I think we'll just have to see how the medical response is in each specific locality to really get a good idea of what the real risk is.

I don't necessarily think that a dollar amount is actually the best way to think about it. It's very hard to think about what value you'd place on avoiding a hypothetical 1/500 risk of death (adjust based on percentage of population you think will contract this). Note that as a 40yo, your odds of dying period within that year is actually about 1/500: https://www.finder.com/life-insurance/odds-of-dying

You can then split this up by percentages for cause of death: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/01/16/deaths (Chart 2, select your age category)

UK chart, but also some charts on annual death risk: http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html

And lastly, the almost useless CDC data/charts - they include leading causes and absolute number by cause and age-group, but not the population size so you have no idea what your odds are: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/LeadingCauses.html

In any case, once you have the odds down, you can place the amount of effort you'd spend relative to the amount of effort you spend on other risks.

It's not that hard if you try. We face risk-benefit tradeoffs everyday. You either (1) have an implicit price you put on small risks to your own life in the sense that you accept risks below that price and reject ones above it, or (2) you are acting inconsistently, in the sense that you could strictly reduce risks to your life while making more money (or saving more time, etc.).

> Note that as a 40yo, your odds of dying period within that year is actually about 1/500:

Sure. And I think that if people could purchase immortality for their 40th year for $20k, they should probably do it.

> In any case, once you have the odds down, you can place the amount of effort you'd spend relative to the amount of effort you spend on other risks.

Sure, now just find out how much you pay routinely to avoid this effort (e.g., how much you pay your accountant to do your taxes), and you've got a risk-dollar exchange rate.

There's more to it, but the point I was trying to make is that the amount of time/effort/money you spend worrying about coronavirus should (rationally) be relative to what you spend for other similar risks.

For your last example, I think that what you pay to save time or effort saving services might be on a different calculus since there's a guarantee of how much time or bother it might save you, vs a potential downside calculation.

Sorry, are you just saying different people may have different amounts? Sure, sure. But for a given individual the amount has to be fixed across the choices (at least all the choices close enough in time that the money is fungible).

> since there's a guarantee of how much time or bother it might save you, vs a potential downside calculation.

When I decide to wear a mask to the store, there is a guarantee of how much bother it costs me. The only thing that's uncertain is the risk to my life. But, as previously argued, each person should have a linear risk-dollar exchange rate for small risks.

Lot's of useful data: Age is very significant: 0-9: 0%, ..., 60-69: 3.6%, 70-79: 8.0%, 80+: 14.8% i.e. the kids will be fine, but watch out for the elderly. Men are more affected (2.8%) than women (1.7%). The regional breakdown is apparently a useful approximation of mortality rates when the healthcare system is overwhelmed (Hubei 2.9%) vs not (outside 0.4%). "Health workers" (all employees in a hospital setting) is 0.3% which amongst all the occupational buckets is the lowest. 81% of cases is mild symptoms.

I don't think we know yet how easily a previously exposed person can get reinfected. We do know that people can catch a cold multiple times in a short period, and those are varieties of coronavirus. Mutation rate will also play a factor.

One of the biggest risks is running out of ICU beds, ventilators, ECMO machines due to the 10-15% hospitalization rate.

If it goes wide enough then there will not be treatment available and the mortality rate will skyrocket.

Edit: spelling

Here's an article from the WSJ about how using serum from recovered measles patients prevented an outbreak decades before the vaccine was developed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-boys-blood-stopped-an-out...

Maybe you should question your marriage.