I'm not saying that wars on "terror" are a good thing. It's just that cancer is a very tough problem.
the more accurate exapolation would be relative to the first 4 months of every other studied emerging disease, considering the estimated errors of each of the important variables. you'd fit the various current studies on corona/covid, considering the high uncertainty as (large) estimated error, and providing a range of future outcomes with probabilities on them.
instead, you're asserting your worst possible scenario as the most likely outcome.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
now on the idea that we're entirely too blasé about preventable mortality in general, i agree. if we rigorously and intelligently attacked auto accidents, if we addressed cardiopulmonary diseases caused by pollution and poor habits, and if we regularly shut down the economy for the past decades because we want to reduce the hundreds of thousands of contagious disease fatalities every year and had the socioeconomic safety nets in place for that all along, then the current actions would seem more reasonable.
instead, the response is out of proportion with our own past actions because of panic and fear. it happened with 9/11, mass shootings, fukushima, and everything else. the herd is not good at reasoning about rare and novel mortality events.
Honestly, I think we don't do nearly enough comparisons between disease mortality and other causes of mortality. A "War On Cancer" would have done us far more good than the wars we declared in the 2000s would have.