A day for numbers

In the US, today, per MSNBC, we have over 101,000 dead of the virus, over 1.7 million confirmed cases so far, and over 40 million unemployed.

On the other hand, also per MSNBC, we have new studies indicating that persons who remain asymptomatic account for from 40 % to 80 % of the actual total infected.

Since anybody infected can spread the disease, the greater the number of pre or asymptomatic people who are spreading the disease the more urgent the need for efficacious measures of caution among people who seem healthy.

It is widely supposed that while all confirmed cases are or were symptomatic, not all current and past symptomatic cases in the US are or were also confirmed.

Some unknown number of people got sick (became symptomatic) and then got better without ever being tested, for example.

So the total of symptomatic cases > the cases so far confirmed.

The asymptomatic cases are indicated to be between 40 % and 80 % of the total of actual cases.

So the symptomatic cases are between 60% and 20 % of the actual cases.

So the actual cases are between 10/6 and 10/2 of the symptomatic cases.

But, since the symptomatic cases > confirmed cases, 10/6 and 10/2 of symptomatic cases > 10/6 and 10/2 of confirmed cases.

Now 10/6 and 10/2 of 1.7 M confirmed cases are respectively 2.833333 M and 8.5 M

So the number actually infected in the US so far is between some number > 2,833,333 and some number > 8,500,000.

How's that for mud in your eye?

Anyway, this would indicate fatality estimates based on confirmed deaths and confirmed cases are much too high, and the bug is a lot less lethal than we now fear, for the population as a whole.

And that would be the upside of the downside.