A 73 year old male in the US has 3% probability of dying within one year. Even if you think Trump will claim his victory over nCov-2019 tomorrow, 0.03/365 is still greater than zero.
If you really think the probability of Trump dying this year is zero (which follows from your initial statement), then the bet you offered is unfair. You should be able to bet $1,000,000 to $0.01 and still expect to make money.
The point of this exchange is not to shut you up. If we were narrow versions of a human computer, arriving at some number — 100, 3, 0.03/365, etc — might be enough. When people, especially business people, estimate odds, they do it for the sake of evaluating and managing risks associated with a particular [type of] transaction. Moreover, while managing risks, they try to eliminate rather than multiply uncertainty. In our case, if we were to bet on Trump's claim about the coronavirus, the assumption of him being alive would be written into a contract, rather than left hanging out there and clouding an already uncertain picture. And while you are bringing a valid point that he must still be alive, it's _managed_ into irrelevancy in the context of the underlying transaction.
Furthermore, my offer to you to bet $100 vs $3 on him being alive on Jan 1, 2021, is unfair to me, not to you. That is because when business people make deals in the real world they have to take into account relevant costs, e.g. transaction costs, opportunity costs, reputation costs. My upside on the bet is $3, which doesn't cover my opportunity costs at all. If you wanted to punish me for being a closed-minded liberal living in an echo chamber, you would've taken it any time. But I guess you are a kind person who doesn't want to inflict financial harm on people because of their political views.
Some of the Republican senators running for re-election in 2020 may owe their previous election in part to the Ebola scare, which Trump single-handedly started before the 2014 midterms.
The air ambulance crossed the Atlantic for the first time on August 1, 2014, to pick up Brantly. At that same moment, somewhere in a skyscraper in New York City, Donald Trump opened his Twitter app. “Stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S. Treat them, at the highest level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH PROBLEMS!” Trump tweeted first, at 8:22 a.m. Thirteen hours later, as the air ambulance prepared to bring Brantly home, Trump added: “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!” An analysis by the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy later found that Trump’s tweets represented a turning point, the moment when fear of the deadly virus began to infect the American public. <...> Trump kept tweeting. In all, the self-admitted germaphobe tweeted about Ebola nearly a hundred times over the next three months. He was among the first to call for a travel ban between the three West African countries and the United States, a call later adopted by Republicans running in the fall midterms. He advocated against sending thousands of American troops, a decision public health officials in Liberia later said helped stem the tide of the outbreak. And when a Liberian man fell ill days after arriving in Dallas to meet the son he had not seen in a decade, Trump warned: “IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE!” He later falsely accused the man, Thomas Eric Duncan, of having signed false papers. He advocated that Duncan be prosecuted, just days before Duncan died. Brantly and Writebol walked out of the Emory hospital three weeks after arriving, cured of the virus but haunted by the physical and mental toll it had taken. Months later, visiting the Ebola response team at the White House, Brantly told the assembled staffers about his ordeal. “I went to Liberia because I was called by God,” Brantly said. “I became deathly ill. I was alone, I couldn’t touch my children or my wife. I was going to die. And my government came to get me and saved my life.” Around the room, the White House staffers wiped tears from their eyes. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/386616-how-ebola-entered-the-american-consciousness-a-trump-tweet
Of course, the Media was there to help spread the hysteria.
In early October, the GOP developed a plan to make the federal government's response to Ebola a central part of its midterm elections strategy. Television media played into Republicans' hands, helping to foment panic about the disease. Following the diagnosis of a handful of U.S. Ebola patients, the major broadcast networks ran nearly 1,000 segments about the virus in the four weeks leading up to the elections. Coverage of the disease plummeted in the two weeks following Election Day, with the same networks running fewer than 50 total segments. https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/report-ebola-coverage-tv-news-plummeted-after-midterms
Thanks to the successful fear-mongering, Republicans took control of the Senate, Mitch McConnell became the majority leader and got a chance to control the nomination process for the Supreme Court, and Trump’s twitter account got its recognition as a political force.
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Are you taking the bet then?
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Just to make sure: I’m not asking you for an advice on what I should or should not do. I’m offering you a bet.
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Furthermore, my offer to you to bet $100 vs $3 on him being alive on Jan 1, 2021, is unfair to me, not to you. That is because when business people make deals in the real world they have to take into account relevant costs, e.g. transaction costs, opportunity costs, reputation costs. My upside on the bet is $3, which doesn't cover my opportunity costs at all. If you wanted to punish me for being a closed-minded liberal living in an echo chamber, you would've taken it any time. But I guess you are a kind person who doesn't want to inflict financial harm on people because of their political views.
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The air ambulance crossed the Atlantic for the first time on August 1, 2014, to pick up Brantly. At that same moment, somewhere in a skyscraper in New York City, Donald Trump opened his Twitter app.
“Stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S. Treat them, at the highest level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH PROBLEMS!” Trump tweeted first, at 8:22 a.m.
Thirteen hours later, as the air ambulance prepared to bring Brantly home, Trump added: “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!”
An analysis by the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy later found that Trump’s tweets represented a turning point, the moment when fear of the deadly virus began to infect the American public. <...>
Trump kept tweeting. In all, the self-admitted germaphobe tweeted about Ebola nearly a hundred times over the next three months. He was among the first to call for a travel ban between the three West African countries and the United States, a call later adopted by Republicans running in the fall midterms. He advocated against sending thousands of American troops, a decision public health officials in Liberia later said helped stem the tide of the outbreak.
And when a Liberian man fell ill days after arriving in Dallas to meet the son he had not seen in a decade, Trump warned: “IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE!” He later falsely accused the man, Thomas Eric Duncan, of having signed false papers. He advocated that Duncan be prosecuted, just days before Duncan died.
Brantly and Writebol walked out of the Emory hospital three weeks after arriving, cured of the virus but haunted by the physical and mental toll it had taken. Months later, visiting the Ebola response team at the White House, Brantly told the assembled staffers about his ordeal.
“I went to Liberia because I was called by God,” Brantly said. “I became deathly ill. I was alone, I couldn’t touch my children or my wife. I was going to die. And my government came to get me and saved my life.”
Around the room, the White House staffers wiped tears from their eyes.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/386616-how-ebola-entered-the-american-consciousness-a-trump-tweet
Of course, the Media was there to help spread the hysteria.
In early October, the GOP developed a plan to make the federal government's response to Ebola a central part of its midterm elections strategy. Television media played into Republicans' hands, helping to foment panic about the disease. Following the diagnosis of a handful of U.S. Ebola patients, the major broadcast networks ran nearly 1,000 segments about the virus in the four weeks leading up to the elections. Coverage of the disease plummeted in the two weeks following Election Day, with the same networks running fewer than 50 total segments.
https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/report-ebola-coverage-tv-news-plummeted-after-midterms
Thanks to the successful fear-mongering, Republicans took control of the Senate, Mitch McConnell became the majority leader and got a chance to control the nomination process for the Supreme Court, and Trump’s twitter account got its recognition as a political force.