see, given that the epidemic has burned itself out and new york city seems to be approaching herd immunity, i'd guess that it seems far too low.

the media has made real idiots of themselves out of this, and has a lot of face-saving to do. you're probably not going to get a full mea culpa from anybody - nobody is going to go on tv and say "we were wrong.". these people rely on their perceived credibility, which should and hopefully will take a major drubbing. likewise, you're likely to get a lot of obfuscation from governments, and social media will just amplify the ignorance.

the data is preliminary, and while i can point to problems in the study that suggest that it undersampled sick people in quarantine, i can't make numbers up. the upper bound right now from these numbers is 25%. other studies suggest it may be higher, but we'll need to wait for more data to come out of new york to corroborate them.

i would expect that the incidence level will be revised upwards as more data is released, not be revised downwards.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/what-we-can-can-t-take-away-new-york-s-n1191106