Thread by @SethAbramson

Folks use CFR in gaming out herd immunity scenarios because we don't know IFR. The CDC gives a massive range for IFR, testing is being strangled, COVID-19 can be had multiple times, asymptomatic infection frequency is unknown...

All we *know* is herd immunity would kill millions

PS/ Across a range of nations/studies, IFR averages 0.8% to 1.2%—but given that we don't know the exact point at which herd immunity is achieved—and given that one can get the virus twice—death calculations can't actually be accurately done, except to say they're in the millions.

PS2/ Part of me wants to have strong words for those who nitpicked the criticisms of Trump's mass-murder plot on the basis that some used CFR, not IFR. We don't have the data to perfectly run such simulations—so there are many ways to make what's fundamentally a rhetorical point.

PS3/ I'll give an example: given that people can (possibly) get the virus an endless number of times, IFR is clearly *not* the right number to use. One could argue that if you get it repeatedly, eventually you'll get it symptomatically and be a case—which means we should use CFR.

PS4/ More importantly, why would anyone nitpick a rhetorical observation everyone knows we don't have sufficient data to make in an exacting way—when you know doing so offers cover for a mass-murder plot that, no matter how you run the numbers, would kill *millions* of Americans?

PS5/ My take: there's a competition on social media that we're all implicitly participating in—even though we don't want to—to prove that we have a better handle on the pandemic than everyone else. And even when the president casually proposes genocide, we keep playing that game.

PS6/ What we *should* all do, instead, is just agree that—in order to aid his re-election bid and protect his investments in the stock market—the President of the United States wants to *commit genocide against Americans*, and simply for saying so should be *removed from office*.