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The fact that we are at 65,000 now (actually more) even with steps taken (especially in California) makes that argument ring strongly false to me, but in any case what's the point? 200,000 is supposed to be an acceptable number?
The interviewee, who is a Professor at Stanford Medical school, believes that mask wearing and hygienic practices seemed to slow the disease spread in every situation he looked at even before the advent of social distancing. His issue with the 2mm number was that it didn't track with any data he has looked at on the disease spread in any country ( and since he took an interest in Wuhan quite early as he had friends in China he actually was analyzing their pandemic in real time).
Part of the issue here is not whether 200,000 deaths is an acceptable number as once the disease is in your population, and if you don't prevent the spread to the elderly population (90% of the deaths come from that population), you are going to get higher casualties. He argues that if economic shutdown had zero costs, then of course you should do it to save lives. But In his view, the shutdown will cost more lives ultimately than the virus will take. That is the point that people are not willing to discuss and that is why having an accurate estimate of the death toll and what it would take to control it is important.
It is a good interview and I am not doing it justice. But in the end, policy making needs to balance things out and know what is necessary and what is not.
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