It's an acronym for Wuhan Coronavirus. There are many coronoviruses and it's natural to use the place of origin to distinguish it from others. This is how we name other species and things in general. In science this is called binomial nomenclature.
It doesn't cost a million. But me too, I will pick the virus over the million. Obviously because I don't have the million but with a massive loan for the rest of my life, it may not be impossible. So time to pull out the micromorts.
Case fatality rate for COVID-19 is estimated to be about 1.4% (still uncertain). That's 14000/1000000 chance of death, or 14000 micromorts.
Studies in the US have shown that people are ready to pay ~$50 per micromort. If we assume that remdesivir really is the ultimate coronavirus killer, it means that following statistics, people would pay $700k for it. Not that far off from your million.
In reality, safety standards in the US put the micromort at around $10, so that miracle cure would be about $140k.
Of course, it is just general statistics, a wealthy old man will pay much more than a poor kid (risk of death increase with age). It assumes remdesivir is a miracle cure, which isn't, we are not sure if it is effective at all.
In reality, it looks like treatment is going to be around $3000, which, if it improves my chances of survival by a few percent, is actually a sensible price.
>In reality, it looks like treatment is going to be around $3000, which, if it improves my chances of survival by a few percent, is actually a sensible price.
But will you pay $3000 for each and every thing that improves your chance of survival by a few percent?
Definitely not when put that way, but it is actually not that far fetched. For example, spending $3000 more for a safer car is not uncommon. Insurance premiums, cost of installing guard rails on your balcony or securing your electrical installation, buying protective equipment, etc... Plus what you pay so that the government can make roads safer, to have water that is safe to drink and food that is safe to eat, etc... That's a lot of $3000 in the end.
If an American household is already paying for all that safety, then reducing risk presumably means additional $3000 "chunks of safety". And if there are double digits of possible risks, then it's prohibitive.
A seat belt looks like it's worth a few micromorts per thousand miles, and they cost less than $50 per seat. A great bargain. Airbags give you diminishing returns on top of that, while costing almost 4x as much, but even if you estimate 1/10th the effectiveness of the seatbelt you're still looking at dozens of micromorts over the lifetime of a vehicle: worth it.
But $3000 for a percentage chance of a percentage chance is a lot tougher to argue for repeatedly.
If a micromort is really worth $50, then by my calculation, not riding a motorcycle is worth $40,000 per year.[1] Every year. The long term risk free interest rate at the moment is 1.39%, so the standard formula for a perpetuity says $40,000 indefinitely is worth about $2.8 million.
The logical conclusion is that you should pay yourself to get rid of the motorcycle. I'm not sure how anyone else gets involved. Especially when your donated organs can save other people.
You could get the government to pay a lot of money to make motorcycles unnecessary, but they already are.
Also $50 sounds high to me. Most standards are closer to $5-10.
That, and your previous post as far as I understand, only makes sense if someone that owns a motorcycle is stuck using it, unable to put it away or destroy it.
A world where motorcycles act like curses is an interesting concept for a short story, but not very relevant to a discussion of micromorts.
Well, if the cost of riding a motorcycle is millions of dollars, then it must be that they act like curses in the real world; otherwise you can't explain people doing it.
* People don't act rationally about small risks, and greatly exaggerate or diminish them based on fear.
* Not everyone is going to put the same value on their own life.
* Some people will find major restrictions worse than a very small risk of death.
There's three perfectly good explanations.
Also if you use $5 per micromort, a pretty standard number, you get a motorcycle-riding cost of about eleven dollars a day. Plenty of people would pay that on purpose.
Also using perpetuity math is really wrong unless you plan to live hundreds of years.
Riding motorcycles is real dangerous. (And in large part, the risk isn't controllable by the rider.) I take part in snowboarding, climbing, and mountaineering activities that are statistically fairly high-risk, but I'd never take up motorcycling.
