That said -> I would say about a week ago, about when Chris Cuomo 'got sick' ... the government seems to have teamed up with the media to start making people fear the virus. Yes, duh, many were already panicked, but I don't think the government felt people were complying with distancing. So they cooked up a little scare campaign. The numbers they released were intentionally high (I think Gates slipped when he said lower than Fauci and HansBirx's low) ... and then you get Cuomo coming out with his drama queen pinnate crap.
I don't see us (the US, when this is over) coming in much higher than 50 - 70K. But that's napkin math based off other country numbers who are passed the peak, but who the hell knows how accurate their numbers are and of course there is the 'died of' vs 'died with' BS going on, perhaps an evil tinfoil conspiracy, more likely a fear tactic spiced with additional evil motives (lovers of large government plus biopharm execs weeping as they are seeing a jackpot pass by.)
NOW, could one argue that 'it's going to be that low partially BECAUSE the government and media attempted to scare the crap out of people with higher numbers - and hence they distanced better - buying more time for testing, antibody testing, and HQL or it's friends to get mass produced' ... I think one could argue that. I'm not saying they'd be right, I actually don't know.
I think there's a lot of manipulation going on. I'm not convinced it's entirely evil. It may be misdirected and ignorant and elitist, and certainly it's peppered with evil, but I think mankind is as I said at best a bad dream and more often a nightmare.
This whole thing starts out as a bad dream, so if that's all it winds up being, then it's not so much that we did well, but we can be thankful we didn't wind up worse.
In short: Yes, they are bending the numbers intentionally. I personally think it's because they have a mob on their hands that they feel has to be guided through this. In addition to that is a whole hell of a lot of evil players -> but what do you expect?
I think Trump will guide things towards us getting back to work soon, and the flubros will forever claim that they were right ... but the reality is it was always true that the chances of it turning out that way were 5 out of 6. The question is: If I offer you 1000$ to walk through a room that has a 1 in 10 chance of giving you pancreatic cancer ... are you going to walk through it? The flubros claim they would. I think they wouldn't ... but they would have others do it. And, probably whoever went through wouldn't die, and they would say 'see, it wasn't dangerous, I told you so', and they would be right, and also be morons.
None of this is all that cut and dry, except it's time to lay out the plan to get back to work. I suspect that starts end of this week out of Trump.
Oops didn't mean to write that much! :-P ... just thoughts I'm no expert ... back to watching Contagion which, interestingly, has a similar debate especially during the CDC guy's interview about 5/8ths of the way through.
In re the flu tis and pancreatic cancer question, you ignore the fact if the increase of deaths of despair due to suicide and drug and alcohol abuse and domestic abuse and depression and anxiety and paranoia.
So like have it so that 1 out of 100 in the room dies if you DON’T take the walk. That’s been my argument all along. People are truly dying from the “cure.” And at least some of the covid deaths would have died from the next opportunistic infection, normally.