Three related questions, since Rush is on making himself look bad again talking about flu numbers (again)...
1) Has there been any change in the estimate of 1-2 million fatalities if Covid-19 was treated like a bad flu year (except that we have no vaccine to administer, of course).
2) We've been hearing 60k fatalities recently as the projection for COVID-19 in the USA, but is that the center of a revised range of fatalities with current mitigation*, or is it the low figure of a revised range of potential fatalities with current mitigation*?
*Followed by a carefully managed relaxation and a great testing / tracing program, I would have to assume.
3) Is the actual infection rate looking lower than projections of 2-3 weeks ago, or are we doing better with treatments than expected, or a little of both?
(FReepers are posting all sorts of analysis / graphs, but I'm having a hard time seeing if experience with treatments, the various meds being discussed, etc., are really showing up in our fatality numbers. That esp. since as discussed above, the US population as a whole has plenty of risk factors (obesity, diabetes, etc.), making country to country comparisons tricky. I think the only place we'd see real improvements with treatment(s) is in a lowering of the CFR for hospitalized cases as time goes on.)
As far as I know, the model that initially had the crazed 1M to 2M total deaths already had some form of mitigation baked into it. If somebody knows otherwise, please let me know.
My daily fatality index was around 30 for the US back about 18 March. Actions to date have lowered that to about 7% as of last night. Below is what the curve may have looked like if the US hadn't taken any actions at all to slow the spread and the DFI stayed at 30. Actually, the DFI would probably have risen quite a lot more once HCS collapsed and people began dying en mass from the lack of available medical treatment.
