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

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.

• 1% is a pretty high es­ti­mate; how­ever, It’s okay to value your life to an ar­bi­trary de­gree. Yes, that breaks down out­side cer­tain bounds, but it’s okay to take pre­cau­tions. It’s a scary situ­a­tion. Just don’t for­get to see to your emo­tional needs too.

I hope that you’re do­ing well. It’s nice to run into you.

• Ja­son Kleinberg

• I think your value of your life is too high, since you al­most cer­tainly can’t earn nearly that much dur­ing your life. Let’s say you’ll be get­ting 150k per year for 40 years. Then in to­tal you’ll earn only 6kk .