One thing I’d emphasize, even though it’s just a subjective opinion. I think that the points scale is OOMs, not a linear scale.
Just as an hypothetical example, imagine a disease that had everything bad listed here, except it didn’t kill anybody. Obviously there would be something bad about it that was making it lead to quarantines, newspaper coverage, hospital overwhelm, and a race for treatments. But unless the typical outcome is “as good as dead,” the single fact that nobody dies from it makes it seem a lot less concerning than a disease that does everything else bad and kills a lot of people.
Feel free to peruse my old posts at LessWrong.
Edit: Peter did the useful work, but also, Here’s Why I’m Hesitant To Respond In More Depth
I think the backtests from DirectedEvolution’s data are:
1918 flu would have scored 14⁄14
COVID-19 13⁄14
1968 H3N2 Hong Kong flu 11⁄14
2009 H1N1 swine flu 10⁄14
Ebola 9⁄14
2022 Mpox—debuted at 4⁄14, eventually rose to 6⁄4
Thanks Peter!!!
One thing I’d emphasize, even though it’s just a subjective opinion. I think that the points scale is OOMs, not a linear scale.
Just as an hypothetical example, imagine a disease that had everything bad listed here, except it didn’t kill anybody. Obviously there would be something bad about it that was making it lead to quarantines, newspaper coverage, hospital overwhelm, and a race for treatments. But unless the typical outcome is “as good as dead,” the single fact that nobody dies from it makes it seem a lot less concerning than a disease that does everything else bad and kills a lot of people.