[DuskStar]

> We have talked about “pull off the bandaid”- to have 200M people get the disease means we’re going to lose somewhere between 1-2M people (just in the US).

IF a few things are true:

1. The population being infected matches the demographics of the US as a whole. If the population is instead "healthy people under 60", IIRC the deaths go from 1-2M to 10-20k.

2. There is no way to infect someone deliberately in a way that reduces death rates. Variolation [0] has worked in the past, and is a possibility here. If it provides an additional factor of 10 safety benefit, you could now estimate 1-2k deaths, down from 1-2 million.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation