there is no reliable data available on covid-19. everything is conjecture.
Marc Lipsitch/Harvard - with the help of FakeNewsMSM - spread the meme, still popular today, that 40% to 70% of the world’s adult population could become infected.
however, he changed his mind. no-one noticed. just a tweet.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: The latest on the coronavirus
March 2: Coronavirus may infect up to 70% of world’s population, expert says (CBS News)
According to Marc Lipsitch, 40% to 70% of the world’s adult population could become infected with the new coronavirus, and of those, 1% could die from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. (In a later tweet, Lipsitch revised his estimates downward, to 20% to 60% of adults becoming infected.)
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/the-latest-on-the-coronavirus/
Tweet: Marc Lipsitch
Because I am now less certain of where the R0 will end up (and how it may vary geographically) I am going to revise downward the range of outcomes I consider plausible to 20%-60% of adults infected. This involves subjectivity about what range of R0 may turn out to be true.
3 Mar 2020
https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464
Didn’t see that yet. That’s goodness if Lipsitch revised the estimate downward. But he’s apparently still saying 20-60% vs 40 - 70% which is significant.
Business Insider writers didn’t notice; added alarmist conjecture from CDC and NYT; also pointed to origin of Lipsitch’s original conjecture - a podcast with Harvard’s Noah Feldman (of impeachment fame?):
14 Mar: Business Insider: Multiple experts say up to 70% of Americans could be infected with the coronavirus and 1 million could die if no treatment is found — so people over 60 should ‘stay home unless it’s critical’
by Aylin Woodward, Anna Medaris Miller
Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told the “Deep Background” (with Noah Feldman, Harvard) podcast on February 28 that the coronavirus could affect between 40 and 70% of the world’s adult population – about 3 billion people...
Four disease scenarios, modelled in February by experts at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suggested between 160 million and 214 million people in the US could get infected within a year. Between 200,000 and 1.7 million Americans could die, according to a New York Times report...
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/coronavirus-150-million-americans-may-get-infected-2020-3?r=US&IR=T
CBS got the ball rolling, but no-one noted the final paragraphs excerpted below:
2 Mar: CBS: Coronavirus may infect up to 70% of world’s population, expert warns
CBS News spoke to one of the country’s top experts on viruses, Marc Lipsitch from Harvard University, who cautions that 40-70% of the world’s population will become infected — and from that number, 1% of people who get symptoms from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could die...
Jim Axelrod: So, the number that I think is grabbing a lot of people is this estimate: 40-70% of the world’s adult population could be infected.
Marc Lipsitch: Yes.
Axelrod: Accurate?
Lipsitch: That is a projection, so we will find out if it’s accurate as things go on. It is the best estimate that I’ve been able to make based on a combination of the mathematical models that we use to track and predict epidemics...
Lipsitch: This is not an existential threat. This is, qualitatively, it’s very much like a bad pandemic of influenza, which we experienced arguably twice or three times in the 20th Century. It’s worse than the one that we experienced in 2009. But none of those brought civilization close to its knees. They made things awful for a while.
Axelrod: And this won’t either?
Lipsitch: And this will not either.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-infection-outbreak-worldwide-virus-expert-warning-today-2020-03-02/