Even the highest positive rates I've seen (in the UK where the testing situation is dire) are only 30%. In other countries with more tests it's around 15% and stable over long periods.
If the number of infected were truly growing that fast, then you'd see the proportion of positive tests go up and up until negative tests were hardly happening, but that isn't close to what's seen on the ground.
What we are supposing is instead that the number of people who are presently infected will increase exponentially IF we don't adopt measures to decrease the spread
That's not what policymakers are supposing. If that were true there wouldn't be a global run on ventilators, which assumes enormous growth over case load today.
This literally isn't real.
That's not much of a response. Where are there politicians not saying their decisions are just guided by the science? The only places where politicians even pushed back slightly on epidemiologists are Brazil and - briefly - the USA.
At this time what epidemiologists say should be done, is done, no questions asked. In Denmark they are even restricting speech to stop people criticising the adopted measures, or so it's said. Look at what happened to my post above - even investigating or criticising those currently making the decisions is suddenly penalised.
A tiny number of academics with no track record of accuracy have obtained enormous power now. If they say lock down, countries lock down. If they say close the borders, the borders are closed. If they say open up, countries open up.
It's right and proper that such people be subject to the same scrutiny as normal politicians are.
As for politicians having done nothing, I don't think that's fair. Does the USA not have large stockpiles of ventilators and masks? Perhaps unusable in the end, but that level of detail is not for politicians, only civil servants. As for beds, well, even assuming the modellers are right no healthcare system in the world can have tens of thousands of ICU beds empty, sitting for a once in a century pandemic. Politicians who tried to have such levels of slack would soon be replaced by others who cared more about utilisation. I don't think there's much to say about them at this time; for better or worse they've taken a back seat.
What we are supposing is instead that the number of people who are presently infected will increase exponentially IF we don't adopt measures to decrease the spread. This is actually what you saw in the initial period and what you would be seeing now if we did nothing extraordinary to decrease the spread. If you look at the 1918 flu epidemic it ultimately infected 1/3 of the population. It is utterly unclear to me why you imagine your understanding is better than that of the experts. It would seem you yourself are guilty of the same sin you ascribe to programmers? From your animus towards the profession are you perhaps a manager of same? If so you seem to have contracted at least one of their faults.
> politicians have in the blink of an eye ceded power to a tiny cabal of (primarily) epidemiologists.
This literally isn't real.
The politicians are indeed at fault for the poor response. We cede to them substantial funds and powers to both prepare for and response to situations just like this. In fact the pentagon prepared a report on literally just this exact crisis in 2017 that called out among other things a lack of supplies. We opted to do nothing of import between now and today. In the crucial early days of this crisis instead of instituting effective measures we were busy first ignoring reports of it and then publicly claiming it is a hoax. If we aren't brave and clear sighted enough to even ascribe blame how are we to do better next time?