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The links providing access to the comparative graphs did not use China. The one graph that included China was like comparing the rocky mountains to the Ozark foothills. Also, all of China's first 100 identified cases were free vectors, they were present in the general population with the ability to infect communally up until the point of detection. The first 100 cases in the US included 25 - 30% who were not free vectors. They were identified and isolated prior to entry into the country. The had no reasonable ability to contribute to communal infection.

Properly normalizing the variables may not affect the slope of the graphs that much, but I would have to see it to believe it. Without proper normalization of all the significant variables, it is just garbage in - garbage out. Although superficially impressive, this presentation amount to little more than "my guess is better than your guess".

“Properly normalizing the variables may not affect the slope of the graphs that much, but I would have to see it to believe it. Without proper normalization of all the significant variables, it is just garbage in - garbage out. Although superficially impressive, this presentation amount to little more than “my guess is better than your guess”.”

Yes, you are correct, it is impressive. We shall soon see how accurate it will be.

My bet is on the doc.

IC Clearly

One of our great heroes in this area is Justin Lessler PhD at Johns Hpkins. He is with the AIDS Research Center there in Baltimore and he is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
From his page there:
“The major focus of my research is the development and application of statistics, dynamic models and novel study designs to better understand and control infectious disease. In particular, I am interested in creating synergies between infection control practice, data collection and infectious disease dynamics. Exemplary of this goal, my collaborators and I have developed methods to estimate the distribution of incubation periods for an infectious disease using coarse data, applied these methods to develop the best available estimates for a number of viruses, and showed how these estimates can be used to improve infection control practice.

My current research projects include work on the transmission dynamics of influenza in southern China, and the most effective use of vaccine in the control of measles and cholera. “

His email is jlessle1@jhu.edu but I expect he is quite busy these days..

Here is a link to the IDEA equation if you want to read about it. I think you will see why people think this approach works. Its at science direct and there is a pdf link at the top of the page:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755436516300305