of course, the corollary of that is that if we do antibody testing and find out that only 10% of the population has been infected then the mortality rate of the disease becomes rather distressing.

at 10% infected and .1% mortality, you're looking at around 33,000 deaths in the united states, total, and they're almost there. if the numbers keep going up, you'll need to increase the number of people infected, or increase the mortality rate, or both, to understand what's happening.

i think that the totality of the data suggests that the disease is extremely contagious and not very fatal, meaning you should be increasing the infected rate, rather than the mortality rate, in order to make sense of the numbers.

at 66% infected and .1% mortality, you're looking at 220,000 deaths - 8-9x as many as have already occurred. that is going to take a few months to happen, and much of the damage will be done in the midwest, but if i'm right then you need to shut down everything to prevent it - food distribution, pharmacies, hospitals, everything. my critique is not that it's impossible in theory to sit inside for six weeks, it's that we're not actually implementing enough of a policy to allow this to work and that, furthermore, in reality, we can't actually do it. so long as people are out in the city engaging in commerce, they are spreading the disease, and it's just a matter of time....

but, i don't want to shut down everything, i want stricter controls in place to protect those that specifically need it, and greater freedom of movement for people that don't require that level of protection, that can fight it off on their own.

we'll know when they test, and not before then.

and, if they don't test, we'll never know - although we should draw conclusions about why they aren't testing.