What do we actually face? What about that rollback?

Even leaving aside the fact that in the fall we will have the flu to contend with.

Recently we have read of studies indicating our estimates of how many have or have had the disease are drastically wrong, and that the true number of infections, looking at several reports, could be from 20 to 85 times the official numbers, at least in the US.

And if that's true then, even if the virus dead, as some recent studies suggest, are half again more numerous than has been thought - so make the numerator half again more - the number of infected could be at least 20 times greater than thought - so make the denominator 20 times greater.

So multiply the currently accepted lethality guesstimate by 1.5/20 = 0.075 and you get not 5% or 10 % but 0.375 % to 0.75 %.

I don't really believe the numbers are truly that low, but if we're looking at studies of mortality we have to look at studies of the extent of infection, too.

We are really still way in the dark both about how many are and have been sick and about how many have been killed by this bug, and we can all thank Bozo and the idiotic Republican Party for not giving the US the vast testing program we needed two months ago and have needed every day since.

And still, given we have no vaccine and no natural immunity at least among the uninfected, we could end up with a very high rate of infection in our population if we rollback our precautions too quickly or too soon.

Infections might eventually run as high as 50 % or more.

And that would be 320,000,000 people X 0.5 (infection rate) X 0.005 (maybe the rate of lethality) = 800,000 dead Americans.

Not a great outcome.

And if the WHO is right and there turns out to be little or no natural immunity so the same virus in the same season gets to try to kill you again and again?

So that figure of 800,000 dead is actually too low to a completely unknown degree?

And what would that say about the ultimate possibility and efficacy of a vaccine?

Jeez.

None of which at all diminishes the urgency of getting rid of the dangerously stupid man in the White House and the malignantly stupid party that supports him.