I'm not an epidemiologist, but I have some background in Bayesian problems in biophysics.
Some back of the envelope math for Lombardy, the hardest hit region:
Total population ~ 10M
Total deaths (2020/3/30) = 4773
If one assumes an Infection Fatality Rate of 1% then we would have had 500k cases in the region about two weeks ago. Assuming a doubling of the cases every 5 days, this means that the current actual number of infections stands at 4M and it would take log2(10/4) = 1.3 new doublings to reach saturation: about a week.
Taking instead an IFR of 2% and doubling every 7 weeks, we'd have about 3 weeks left to herd immunity.
Of course one should take into account the fact that at some point this will stop behaving like an exponential and look more like a sigmoid, but herd immunity doesn't need 100% infection, so the orders of magnitude involved should be more or less the same.
This seems to be roughly consistent with what some more authoritative sources are saying for example [0] claims Italy is probably missing 95% of cases.
Nice username. It pays to be aware of the geopolitical games afoot. The Daily Mail seems like its very much the spearhead of an op to deflect blame from the UK/US elite and pin the blame on China.
So what? I'm sure if we knew more about you we could make plenty of 'suspicious assertions' about various parts of your life. The fact is that there is no credible evidence that it came from that lab.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 - "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus. ... Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.""
The only way their dimwitted hot take would be remotely credible is if they were aware of the exact activities of the scientists at the lab in Wuhan and knew exactly which cutting edge technologies they had access to. The only people who would know this are high level intelligence agents who would not be revealing their classified knowledge on a nature.com blog post. It’s not like it’s impossible to selectively breed a stronger virus through conventional methods when you have a lot of prisoners with no human rights to use as bodies to throw at the problem.
This lab was specifically focused on handling coronaviruses. Again, the only one in China. It’s 300 meters from the seafood market.
The 300 meter radius circle surrounding the lab is 0.33 square miles. China is 3705000 square miles. The chances of this happening so close to the lab is therefore 1 in 11.2 million, roughly the odds of winning a lottery jackpot.
Since you're so clever, how do you know it's not aliens?
Note, a Nature Medicine correspondence "blog post" by named people with expertise on the topic is ⋙ HN comment from a pseudonym like both you and me.
"who would not be revealing their classified knowledge"
Your presumption is laughable. It's the lizard people who have that knowledge, not mere humans.
Or, how do you know it wasn't CIA operatives who released it in China in order to place the blame on the Chinese? How do I know you aren't a Russian operative trying to sow confusion and paranoia?
I can come up with more movie scenarios if you want to.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And your "proof" is laughable, because it depends on a cherry-picked conclusion then working backwards to create an irrelevant probability.
I'm probably doing the wrong thing by pointing out some of the problems in your argument head-on, which is something you refused to do with the Nature Medicine communications.
Suppose it was a lab release. Most labs are near population centers, not in Mongolia, so using the entire area of China is silly. Even in the US, Plum Island is not located in Alaska, in part because of how difficult that would be to carry on work there.
Suppose it was a lab release. Why is there only one possible lab that could do it? Are you a high-level intelligence agent who knows the location of all the secret lab research in China?
Suppose it was a lab release. Why would it be from a lab, and not from a place where "a lot of prisoners with no human rights" are located?
Suppose it was a lab release. How are they so clever as to come up with new genetic engineering techniques that aren't known to the open literature, but so stupid as to put the lab in the middle of a city? (Again, see Plum Island.)
Assuming it was a lab release ... what's the end-goal? If it requires a lot of prisoners, then it also requires a lot of people knowing what's going on, and a high risk of accidental disease spreading. Once released, it's certain to affect China, no matter where it's used.
So your numerator is wrong, your denominator is wrong, and there's no justifiable reason to divide one by the other.
Do you also look at pizza restaurant advertisements to find signs of a child trafficking ring?
You must be pretty new at this. This comment is a rather pedestrian ad hominem - well below the quality you showed earlier with "dimwitted hot take".
Perhaps your statement is true because most people just ignore you?
As I wrote: "I'm probably doing the wrong thing by pointing out some of the problems in your argument head-on, which is something you refused to do with the Nature Medicine communications."
You are again refusing to address substantive counter-arguments to your viewpoints. Why is your goal in making these comments?
Some back of the envelope math for Lombardy, the hardest hit region:
Total population ~ 10M
Total deaths (2020/3/30) = 4773
If one assumes an Infection Fatality Rate of 1% then we would have had 500k cases in the region about two weeks ago. Assuming a doubling of the cases every 5 days, this means that the current actual number of infections stands at 4M and it would take log2(10/4) = 1.3 new doublings to reach saturation: about a week.
Taking instead an IFR of 2% and doubling every 7 weeks, we'd have about 3 weeks left to herd immunity.
Of course one should take into account the fact that at some point this will stop behaving like an exponential and look more like a sigmoid, but herd immunity doesn't need 100% infection, so the orders of magnitude involved should be more or less the same.
This seems to be roughly consistent with what some more authoritative sources are saying for example [0] claims Italy is probably missing 95% of cases.
[0] https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/severity/global_cfr_e...