[danialtz]

you're right if one assumes a linear growth, but the reality is that it has an exponential growth. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg for a short intro.

[tarruda]

It only looks exponential at the beginning: https://voxeu.org/article/it-s-not-exponential-economist-s-v...

[cycrutchfield]

It certainly looks exponential until mitigation/suppression measures are put in place or you reach herd immunity. Guess which of the two will result in more deaths?

[glofish]

the problem with that approach is that treats everyone as equally susceptible

most likely those more susceptible get it first

it is not clear what percentage of the population would either not get it or if they do get not get noticeably affected

[DiogenesKynikos]

Virtually everyone is susceptible. This is a novel virus, spreading in a human population with virtually 0% immunity.

With an R_0 of 2.4, approximately 60% of the population can be expected to contract the virus within a few months, unless mitigation measures are taken.

[cycrutchfield]

I think Diamond Princess is a pretty good petri dish scenario for testing that hypothesis. In fact, although there are still some ongoing cases so the data is not finalized, you can normalize by passenger/crew age and reach a final infection fatality rate estimate for the whole population.

Here's a tip: it still comes out to be 5-10x higher than the seasonal flu.