# Coronavirus Fears **If we base our individual decisions only on the mortality of the elderly, and freely go about our business we'll infect more people (and also more elderly people), thus increasing the overall mortality rate.** Our goal should be to decrease the mortality rate, and so we should embrace any lockdown measures and be more careful. See also: - [[Economics Can Be Used to Help Solve Moral Questions]] - [[Why Your Uncle Isn’t Going to Get Vaccinated]] ## Original Thoughts **I didn't believe the above initially and I only came to that conclusion later. In March 2020, I believed we're blowing things out of proportion (I quickly changed my mind on that)**. I wrote the following in March 2020: I think the panic is unfounded. I mean we’re still talking about a variant of the flu, not smallpox or Ebola. And I’m questioning the accuracy of the 2% mortality rate estimate because **the number of tested people is relatively small, and we’re not counting people with only light and mild symptoms who didn't even go to the doctor’s, but only hospital cases (that are disproportionately severe)**, and people the hospitalized infected. But even if the predictions are accurate with mystical precision, we’re still talking about a mortality rate which is far from random. Basing our individual decisions on a mortality rate that lumps together the healthy with the elderly and those with heart and lung conditions is statistically foolish.