UPDATE: The creator of the coronavirus calculator explains why he created this tool and why he hopes others will help make it better

In more bad news, someone posted an online calculator showing the possibility of dying from coronavirus

Are you a 65-year-old American male with a mild chronic illness living in the Northeast or Upper Midwest who has not changed your social behavior or hygiene habits? According to an online calculator, your chance of dying from coronavirus, aka COVID-19, is 1 in 468

But if you are a 25-year-old woman living in Florida with no pre-existing medical conditions, minimal social contact, and good hygiene, your odds of dying from coronavirus are only 1 in 7,349

Both of these results assume that 10% of the population is infected with coronavirus, that 2% of those infected die, and that medical readiness for a pandemic is at average levels in most areas of the United States

All of these assumptions are subject to change and can be adjusted in the calculator using a sliding scale There are nine parameters: age, preconditions, social contact, hygiene, gender, medical services, climate, population infection rate, and infection fatality rate

Some of the options are binary: one can choose male or female, warm or cold climate

Pre-existing medical conditions can be "none," "mild," or "severe," and sanitary conditions and quality of local medical services can be "good," "normal," or "poor" Age, social contact, and COVID-19 infection and fatality rates are more detailed

Some categories need more explanation For each, a brief sentence or paragraph pops up on the screen when you click on the sliding scale, but it is not clear whether diabetes or heart disease is considered "mild" or "major" when it comes to pre-existing conditions Similarly, without some examples, it is unlikely that anyone would consider themselves "unhygienic"

If one does not like the results or wants to add or change categories, one can edit the local version of the calculator on a separate web page We added "Massive" as the sixth setting to the amount of social contact a hypothetical subject would have and saw it appear in a separate frame

This edit did not change the actual website results, but there is a link to send a suggestion email to the site author We sent a bunch of questions about the site to that email address and will update this post when we get a reply

UPDATE: The creator of the coronavirus calculator tells us that he is Ben Al-Bahari, a software developer living in London

Al-Bahari says, "Some people say it's the apocalypse, others say there's nothing to worry about

"Risk should be expressed as a number, not an emotion," he added

"And they need to be individualized, because not everyone has the same risks

These risk probabilities, Al-Bahari said, "are only rough calculations at the moment" He said he has no medical training or background, which is "why we have been completely open about the source of the calculations