I used microcovid a lot but less so in recent months, because it is not useful for omicron and because it does not include rapid tests. Also I have become less careful after vaccination. I’ve also had the feeling microCOVID was a bit conservative. Does the risk estimate take into account that a part of infectious people deliberately stay at home and you are less likely to meet them?
Updates I would suggest (in addition to other update mentioned in other comments)
adjustment of the risk for people who tested negative on a rapid test. Rapid tests are popular in my social circles. I would use this feature for 1-2 social activities per month for as long as the pandemic lasts.
estimate the risk of catching long covid for vaccinated people. I don’t care about having symptoms of a breakthrough infection for a few days. I care about how it affects my wellbeing and productivity in the long run. Would be worth one time $20-$400 for me depending on how reliable it is and how much new information it provides me.
(related) a suggested risk budget if you are vaccinated.
(lower prio) Instead of filling in only one mask for “their mask“ specify how many people around you have which type of mask. Especially useful for public transportation where half of the people don’t wear their mask properly.
One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen listed yet: Adjustment for boosters (and generally updating the vaccine adjustments, which I think are almost certainly too generous for 1- and 2-dose vaccination, once Omicron is circulating.)
Lately, I have mostly been using Microcovid as a guide for training my intuition about how important the various factors are. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the actual output of the model overall right now, since it doesn’t account for boosters, or for Omicron. I also have a general distrust of some of the model’s simplifying assumptions about how factors interact, although I don’t have anything better to substitute, other than my own intuitive judgement.
(lower prio) Instead of filling in only one mask for “their mask“ specify how many people around you have which type of mask. Especially useful for public transportation where half of the people don’t wear their mask properly.
This particular example is designed to illustrate a way of arriving at a reasonable estimate of this risk without going through each individual component, which is that the largest risk tends to dominate. Zvi summarizes this as “Risks Follow Power Laws”, which is just as true when evaluating the decomposed risks of a single activity as it is for evaluating a set of distinct activities. Not all activities will follow this pattern of a single dominant risk component since it’s very possible to have many components which each contribute a fairly inconsequential risk but in aggregate the risk is enough to matter. However, starting with the biggest risk factor lets you come to a decent estimate quickly. This is especially convenient when you have a clear decision criteria (e.g. “I’ll take the bus if the risk is 10 microcovids or less, and drive otherwise”), since if the highest risk factor is above this then you’re done. If it’s quite a bit below, you’re also done, since the other factors are unlikely to get you there (e.g. if you mentally decompose the activity into 3 parts, and the one you expect to be the biggest risk is 1 microcovid, then you’d also be done unless your mental model of risk is way off).
My willingness to pay for incorporating rapid tests: $100 (relatively low because I think I can just apply this post manually pretty easily). If there is significant variation across available tests then my WTP would rise to $200+.
I used microcovid a lot but less so in recent months, because it is not useful for omicron and because it does not include rapid tests. Also I have become less careful after vaccination. I’ve also had the feeling microCOVID was a bit conservative. Does the risk estimate take into account that a part of infectious people deliberately stay at home and you are less likely to meet them?
Updates I would suggest (in addition to other update mentioned in other comments)
adjustment of the risk for people who tested negative on a rapid test. Rapid tests are popular in my social circles. I would use this feature for 1-2 social activities per month for as long as the pandemic lasts.
estimate the risk of catching long covid for vaccinated people. I don’t care about having symptoms of a breakthrough infection for a few days. I care about how it affects my wellbeing and productivity in the long run. Would be worth one time $20-$400 for me depending on how reliable it is and how much new information it provides me.
(related) a suggested risk budget if you are vaccinated.
(lower prio) Instead of filling in only one mask for “their mask“ specify how many people around you have which type of mask. Especially useful for public transportation where half of the people don’t wear their mask properly.
One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen listed yet: Adjustment for boosters (and generally updating the vaccine adjustments, which I think are almost certainly too generous for 1- and 2-dose vaccination, once Omicron is circulating.)
Lately, I have mostly been using Microcovid as a guide for training my intuition about how important the various factors are. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the actual output of the model overall right now, since it doesn’t account for boosters, or for Omicron. I also have a general distrust of some of the model’s simplifying assumptions about how factors interact, although I don’t have anything better to substitute, other than my own intuitive judgement.
Good point, agreed! Here is my (not very good) current attempt to adjust manually: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YtWqgzLDqxSvJDkCi/how-should-we-adjust-microcovid-estimates-for-omicron
One way of bounding the risk would be to estimate the risk from the maskless and masked independently and then add their risk together. For instance, if you’re using their “going to work” scenario, you could decompose that profile into the various sub-activities that it’s made up of, which might be “going to work” with 1 person within 15 feet wearing an N95 and silent, 2 people within 15 feet wearing a cloth mask snugly, and 1 person within 15 feet wearing no mask and yelling at the conductor. That gives 3.5 + 14 + 450 microcovids, for an approximate total of 470.
This particular example is designed to illustrate a way of arriving at a reasonable estimate of this risk without going through each individual component, which is that the largest risk tends to dominate. Zvi summarizes this as “Risks Follow Power Laws”, which is just as true when evaluating the decomposed risks of a single activity as it is for evaluating a set of distinct activities. Not all activities will follow this pattern of a single dominant risk component since it’s very possible to have many components which each contribute a fairly inconsequential risk but in aggregate the risk is enough to matter. However, starting with the biggest risk factor lets you come to a decent estimate quickly. This is especially convenient when you have a clear decision criteria (e.g. “I’ll take the bus if the risk is 10 microcovids or less, and drive otherwise”), since if the highest risk factor is above this then you’re done. If it’s quite a bit below, you’re also done, since the other factors are unlikely to get you there (e.g. if you mentally decompose the activity into 3 parts, and the one you expect to be the biggest risk is 1 microcovid, then you’d also be done unless your mental model of risk is way off).
Agree with adjustment for rapid tests. Otherwise, the results are overly conservative.
My willingness to pay for incorporating rapid tests: $100 (relatively low because I think I can just apply this post manually pretty easily). If there is significant variation across available tests then my WTP would rise to $200+.