The Value of Information Can Be Negative

It's always good to know more about a threat, because that intuition doesn't incapsilate the cost of knowing. But it's also possible for the value of information to be negative. Even if people release multiple pendemic capable viruses all at once in multiple airports, we'll pick them up before they spread too widely through air travel and put on our protective equipment. If we actually tried, we could probably build comfortable, even stylish equipment that keeps you from getting infected with viruses. And if we had that kind of equipment available and the threat was that salient, we could do it - even after covid. With that kind of technological advantage, i think we can do it.