[tkiley]

"But what value of R would you pick?"

I don't know -- and until we can agree on the answer to your simple question with a high degree of confidence, I think complex models based on specific assumed values of R obscure more than they reveal.

A little bit of modeling is useful because humans are intuitively bad at exponential math and we need scary graphs to jolt us awake sometimes. But when we don't even know the basic parameters (transmission/hospitalization/fatality) with a high degree of precision, complex models with myriad parameters create a false sense of confidence.

[asddsfgdfsh]

We have a model, we can run some sensitivity analysis, then we can go out and collect data to better estimate the parameters to which we are sensitive to. Important but not glamorous work and hence underfunded.