I saw another seemingly reputable estimate today - some disease person on Joe Rogan's podcast, who was saying that 96 million people could get it, of which 48 million would need to be hospitalized. This makes no sense unless you are predicting a virus mutation. We're not even close to seeing 50% hospitalization rates.

I can. Look at how seriously China shut down cities etc and it still spreads, though much slower. Do you think western nations will take the level of action China has at all or in anyhting similar to the same time frames?

And to be clear, when I say 'I can' I'm not claiming Im right or predicting anything, I really dont know. But this seems as likely as any other scenario especially when experts are saying levels around this.

Source: https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-warn-coronavirus-mo...

However, I do believe that a lot of inaccurate information is being presented. The public attention on this subject is enormous, making it a ripe topic for the media to profit from alarmist headlines.

[0]The source of the 40%-70% figure has since dramatically altered their estimates, and added several qualifiers.

[0]https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464?s=2...

> Summary: Should have said 40-70% of adults in a situation without effective controls.

There's an enormous difference between 40-70% of everyone and 20-60% of adults - specifically if no countermeasures are deployed.

We should be trying to promote risk assessments that are situationally correct.

I mentioned that here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22552973

> [0]The source of the 40%-70% figure has since dramatically altered their estimates, and added several qualifiers.

> [0]https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464?s=2....

After reading the entire thread, he didn't say "zero attempts to mitigate infection". He said "without effective controls". He also said " Increasing evidence that the extremely intense control measures in China have reduced transmission while they are in force. As long as such intense control measures are in place it is possible to imagine keeping the number infected well below 40%. I don't believe most countries (maybe not even China) can keep such controls for months or a year, the minimum time frame for potentially having a vaccine. But even more moderate ones if effective could reduce incidence considerably". Not even Italy has gotten to the extreme measures that China was implementing. Also if you read his more recent tweets you will see that he thinks the European travel ban is futile.

Overall it sounds to me like that 20% number that I have been using since your first post is the updated number based off of our current mitigation strategy. I don't see any indication that he thinks that number is too high given the current path. Once again, I am completely open to learning otherwise if you have something that you can point to that clearly states otherwise.

We don't know enough about the virus to predict almost anything about it and are learning more every day.

I feel like people have already made up their mind about this by reading some extremely poor sources rather than bodies like the WHO so are going to panic no matter what people say.

The best option here would be for me to come back in a month and we'll reexamine the comment. 625,000 is literally insane.

[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51835856

[2] - https://www.wbaltv.com/article/what-percent-of-people-in-the...