Not to get into a flame war...but how do you think the CDC comes up with flu infections? Do you think they did 35,500,000 tests last year? Or is it coincidence that is 10% of the US population.
This who epidemic business is all “educated” guesses....until the tests are done.
Both sides of this argument rely on sketchy information and they use assumptions and estimates more than either side is willing to admit.
We agree on that. Maybe you can identify somewhere in nature where a meaningful estimate is arrived at by extrapolating twice from the same data point. Please explain how a fudge factor can be applied twice.
It's Global Warming math on steroids and there is nothing "educated" about it. Since the discussion is about this article, your attempt to generalize it to the whole universe is a bit of a distraction. Either the method used in this article is valid or it isn't.