Can't overemphasised. The fine print of the travel insurance is very important!
However, I don't get why cancellation policies will be a major reason of the spread. Your explanation on sunk cost fallacy and cancellation seems to be missing. Airbnb has a clause to refund under "Epidemic disease or illness"
Ticket prices are getting lower to Italy, and I see more and more articles that this is the best time to go to vacation because it's so cheap. People don't care about spreading the virus, because they don't care about other people.
The only way to be protected is to stay home and not follow the herd.
They've been under US embargo for decades. In the US, Blacks historically couldn't use commercial hotels which were Whites only. They had to arrange to stay at private homes to travel.
I'm not sure that qualifies as a sunk cost fallacy. Most people have limited budgets for vacations. If they already booked a trip to someplace and cancel it without a refund, they may not be able to afford going somewhere else. On the other hand, if they haven't booked anything they can go somewhere that's of perceived lower risk or just hold off for the time being.
If I were a billionaire I'd tell these people, "Fine, I'll refund you out of my pocket, stay home and don't be an infection vector!". Obviously I'd make them sign a contract to make sure they stay home (or the contract would stipulate that they'd have to pay me back, plus a punishment on top).
Are you male and have a chronic cardiovascular or pulmonary condition?
--- CFR (males and females) ---
50-59 years old 1.3%
40-49 years old 0.4%
30-39 years old 0.2%
Male 2.8%
Female 1.7%
These are averages across ages, and they maybe wildly inaccurate because of the on-going situation has unknowable data on those who are sick but won't seek help or those who will become sick before it's over.
Figure 24% higher if male, so roughly 0.5% (1/200) or 24% lower if female 0.3% (1/300) if female, and average health for both. Health condition makes it too unpredictable to guess further, but good health appears strongly correlated with good outcomes and vice-versa.
You do realize that if those death rates [0] hold up, when you take today's global population by age demographic and tally up how many people are expected to die within each age group, you get a total of 90 million dead.
Given that top epidemiologists are predicting 40-70% of adults will be infected this year, that would mean roughly 35 to 62 million people would die this year.
That sounds like a lot of people, but it's not likely to cause real, noticeable problems in society. I think there's a good chance that our reaction to the virus is more damaging than the virus itself.
If 40-70% of people will be infected this year and 35-62 million will die, that's 1-1.5% death rate. The average person will probably know a few people that die from it, but the average person probably knows hundreds of people. This is going to be similar to the number that die from car accidents or HIV, and neither of those have wrecked society. It's going to be sad, but probably won't change life as we know it, unless we let it.
Personally, I think we're all overreacting a bit, and the overreaction is what's going to cause the problems, not the disease. The Spanish flu caused problems, but that was ~10x deadlier than COVID-19. We all just need to worry less and be a little more proactive about visiting the doctor.
I see these stats popping up when people express fear and it's crazy to me that we've hit the point where saying "Well, you probably won't even die!" is supposed to assuage concern.
Sure, I probably won't die if I get it.
I'd rather not be laid up in the hospital (or at home even, really), missing work and other important events as I accrue a larger and larger financial burden because of the US's expensive health care. And that's not even considering the impact this could have to my elderly family and friends.
Exactly. "Mid-forties" probably means friends and associates in the fifties and sixties, parents in the seventies at least. Just knowing someone who is affected can be harrowing, even if it's not you. But I guess a lot of people here don't ever think about anyone who's not them.
