Attempting to discuss it here will still commonly get you downvoted. HN is not a particularly rational forum. People make the mistake of thinking it is because a lot of engineers hang out here. Engineers are not especially rational, that's a common myth derived from failing to understand the way people mentally compartmentalize; how they can frequently be rational about one subject and irrational about another.
Try this one for example: the numbers they've been reporting about Covid infections the past year are not the actual infection numbers, not even remotely close. Yet they're held up everywhere as being representative of how many infections there have been.
This is still the biggest comedy going about the pandemic. It's hilarious how batshit crazy people can be.
If the US were a sane nation, the people that have been trying to represent the supposedly official infection count as being fully representative of the number of infections that have occurred - those people would be publicly mocked and shamed for being anti-science, the equivalent of flat-earthers. Instead, the flat-earthers dominate the media and national discussion. That's why the lab-leak theory was buried under so much censorship and for so long, those same people have been holding that conversation back very aggressively.
Most people know on some level that the held-up official infection tally is not representative of the real number of infections. And yet the mainstream media, without exception, pretends those are the legitimate infection numbers. Any attempt to discuss how many infections have really occurred, will be shouted down. The shrieking emotionalism that pours out when you open this can of worms, is endlessly fascinating to me.
If you say: how many people in the US have had Covid, they'll point at the magic official number, which is not correct.
If we wanted to have a serious discussion nationally about herd immunity (for example), one of the most important steps is one they intentionally refuse to take: let's try to get a more serious estimate on how many people nationally have actually had Covid.
They won't have that conversation and the media goes out of its way to avoid it (and has done so for a year now). Why? Pick your poison on the why answer. Political psychopaths lusting for control, looking to prolong their ability to take advantage of a disaster (the 'ol never waste a good crisis mentality). Wildly irrational anti-science types in power that pretend they represent science, which is the wing that Fauci belongs to. Maybe a combination. Maybe it's just the fear that if the masses of people think we're anywhere near herd immunity, the vaccination rates will plunge even faster, so some people want to maintain the false illusion (on the actual infection counts) as long as possible.
I think most on HN would agree with your assessment that the real number of cases are somewhat higher than the official count, although I haven’t seen any evidence indicating exactly how much higher or lower. The Dakota states did seem to taper off cases immensely before the vaccines were distributed, indicating a possible early herd immunity.
That's so unlikely it's laughable, but it's widely reported and accepted.
No scientist ever believes any measurement to be perfectly accurate, and different types of random error, systematic errors, and statistical biases always need to be accounted for.
And they are.