[Robert DeLong]

No, that gives you the percentage of resolved cases, not the percentage of each classification. I was giving the current percentage of each of the 2 classifications as they current stand. They will of course change until the still infected fall into one of those 2 classifications, based upon their final diagnosis of, deceased or recovered. That is what you are missing. The percentage that have died so far is 1%, the percentage that have recovered is 73.7% so far. As I said both those percentages will change, but each category can only increase. Neither can decrease from its current percentage. The most likely outcome is that both percentages will increase. The end result can only be, that the majority survived, even if all remaining still infected should succumb and pass away. In that scenario, the dead would number 181 or 26.3%, and the recovered would still be 73.7%. Neither percentage can ever fall below what its current percentage is, each percentage can only increase from this point forward. Thus the worse the recovered percentage can be is what it currently is, 73.7% recovered. Most likely both will increase, but these are the numbers, and the percentages, as they stand today.

The way you are doing it is giving you the resolved percentages.

That is not what I was trying to provide, nor is it the way any of the sites that are reporting report on this, or any virus, does it. They give you the real time percentages based upon the number infected. If you don't believe me, check for yourself. In the case where you know the number of infected can no longer increase, you can determine with certainty when the recovered is going to be the majority outcome. With the Diamond Princess we know what the final infected number is. We also know that a recovery rate of 73.7% is the lowest possible percentage, but we still do not know what the final percentage will be. That gives you some kind of statistics from which to make projections, especially with the Diamond Princess, because of the circumstances involved. It was the perfect petri dish to see real results in a very controlled environment, where infected crew members cooked food, people eating together, close living quarters, lots of social interaction, and a lot of older people were a part of the population on the cruise ship, yet 83% did not get infected. Since we know that 83% did not get infected, that means 17% did get infected. we also know that 712 people got infected. Thus 712 / .17 = 4,188. 4,188 - 712 = 3,476 who did not get infected under those conditions. Why is that We don't know completely, but we know that under those conditions it affected 17% or 712 people. So we can use that as a worse case scenario and say that 17% of the world is the upper end of the number that would possibly be infected. But thankfully the world is not like being in close quarters like a cruise ship for an extended period of time. In the U.S. that means the upper number who contract the virus is 59,500,000 in a worse case scenario. If the recovered rate is 73,7%, 43,851,500 would recover and 15,648,500 would die in the U.S. alone. Remember now that we are using the current recovered rate, so this is a worse case scenario as it stands now, Scary numbers, but they are based upon the information that is currently available, so it truly is the worse possible outcome as it stands with the percentages we know today. But the real world would probably bring far less numbers then this worse case scenario.

Using your method we would have a 98.7% recovered rate, but at best it would stand pat, but more likely it would decline, as more people died. So you would give a rosier worse case scenario than using my method, but when is starts declining it becomes worse. So you might tend to react slower, rather than quicker in the worse case scenario my method delivers. I'm not going to take the effort to actually calculate out the worse case scenario using your method, but I know already that 98.7% recovery rate is going to lessen the impact of that using 73.7 recovery rate. Using my method I know right now what the worse recovery rate I can expect, even though it is not the final recovery rate. Yours is going to offer the best possible as it stands right now.

[null and void]

OK, I think we’ve both done a good job of explaining why we do the calculations the way we do.

We are both honest brokers in attempting to sell our methods to each other.

Neither has convinced the other.

I think we should just agree to disagree and let our grandchildren decide if either of us was right!

I’d rather tell one of the still sick that so far 98.7% of the resolved cases survived. You’d rather say at least 73.7% of the infected have already survived. Both are accurate. Either way the survivors will survive, and the fatalities won’t be complaining!