The folks at Mathematica have a calculator for assessing your odds of catching COVID-19. It includes also your odds then of needing hospitalization, an ICU, and of dying.
So for example, I live in Whatcom county, WA. The following is my personal odds based on having 3 people in my household I have daily contact with, and those folks having contact with 3 others for more than 10 minutes at less than 6 feet of distance. I have no spleen or tonscils, so I am immune compromised. The calculator, found here: COVID calculator ,fills in the bolded parts as follows:
“We found data from Whatcom County, WA for your zip code. This county has 615 confirmed cases out of a population of 229,247 as of 2020-06-29 , and we estimated that your county under-reports by a factor of 6.4x . This means there may be 3,918 actual (confirmed and unconfirmed) cases because many are untested or unreported.
Among people who are the same age, sex, and health status as you, and have behaviors and levels of interaction with others that are similar to yours, the estimated probability of catching COVID-19 through community transmission is 0.066%. For comparison, 0.41% of Americans catch the flu every week during flu season.
Among people who are the same age, sex, and health status as you and get sick from COVID-19, the risk of hospitalization is 39%, the risk of requiring an ICU is 14%, and the risk of dying is 17%.
Good to know you wash your hands per CDC guidance. In general, this lowers people's risk of being exposed to COVID-19 by 55% . Good to know you wear personal protection equipment per CDC guidelines. In general, this lowers people's risk of being exposed to COVID-19 by 68% .
The risk score for people with similar characteristics and behaviors as you is 64. Please take the time to review this page to make sure you're well prepared in the days to come.” That link is to the CDC page on COVID.
Just one exposure to 80-100 people by one of my household members, say by flying, going to a large party, to church, or say to a political rally like Trump held in Tuscon, rockets my odds of catching it well above those of catching the flu during any given week in flu season and raises my risk profile over 80 (bright red on the calculator). You can play around with the settings to determine how your risks change if you change behaviors.
Remember, these odds are calculated PER WEEK, and the incubation period appears to be roughly 2 weeks, so any single exposure sets the odds for probably a two week period before you can breathe easily. That goes the same for members of your household or who you come into contact with. So for example, some of my relatives came back from overseas and spent two weeks in quarantine. Their odds no longer include exposure to over 100 people for over 10 minutes—in effect they were reset much lower. So that makes my risk of meeting them much lower than if we had met at the airport, before they quarantined.
So what’s your risk score? That’s the number found in the last paragraph and shown on the calculator graph. Currently, mine’s 64, relatively low, and my risk of catching it from community transmission is low. But note, my risk, if I catch it, is pretty high, about four chances in ten, that I would need hospitalization. I also don’t like the roughly one in six chance of dying if I catch it. Again, these are not fixed numbers. They change every week if you change behaviors or associations, and if your county does better or worse in controlling community transmission.