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A friend of mine thinks it& #39;s too risky to go out, and asked me to do the maths for him. I did: https://www.ft.com/content/176b9bbe-56cf-4428-a0cd-070db2d8e6ff">https://www.ft.com/content/1...
You need to make a lot of assumptions and guesstimates - too many. I wish the data were better ( @amymaxmen has a great recent piece on this in @NatureNews). But there is enough information to make educated estimates.
In the UK, according to last week& #39;s ONS population survey, there were 22-76 infections per million people per day in England, with a best guess of 44. If you behave like a typical English resident for one day (no, I don& #39;t know what that means either) then...
...feel free to apply the 44 in a million daily chance of infection to yourself. For my friend - in his early 60s - the chance of death, given infection, is about 1%. Chance of lasting harm also seems about 1%. These are all best guesses...
So 2% of 44 in a million gives an almost-cliched one-in-a-million chance of death or lasting harm, for every day existing in the England of August 2020.
If you& #39;re 80 the risks are much higher. If you& #39;re 30 or 40 they& #39;re much lower.
If you& #39;re 80 the risks are much higher. If you& #39;re 30 or 40 they& #39;re much lower.
I was surprised at how low these numbers were. But it& #39;s a reminder of what the challenge now is: prevent a second wave. If these risks double and double and double etc... suddenly we& #39;re back to the nightmare of April.
PS My new book, "How To Make The World Add Up", will NOT teach you how to calculate your own covid risk. But I did have a chance to revise it to reflect the hard lessons the pandemic has taught me - and all of us - about respect for trustworthy data: https://timharford.com/books/worldaddup/">https://timharford.com/books/wor...
PPS This piece went to press shortly before the new daily infection count increased overnight by 50% to around 1500. Normally I wouldn& #39;t worry about daily fluctuations, but given the experience in Spain & France I AM worried about that. We all need to be careful.
