I'm seeing smoke in the suppositions you're making so I'd like to help you. The point estimates for mortality rate, R0 and the like all are subject to interpre

I'm seeing smoke in the suppositions you're making so I'd like to help you. The point estimates for mortality rate, R0 and the like all are subject to interpretation/manipulation. The health agencies have allegedly been subject to regulatory capture both in China and in the USA. 1. The communication of the CDC has changed markedly since the appointment of Pence to the head of the coordinating council. The messaging appears to be more controlled and filtered. 2. The frequent changing of the definition of what a "confirmed case" is in China leads me to completely disregard any published numbers much like other economic metrics published by China. 3. The restrictive testing conditions of the CDC likely has led to multiple cases not yet being discovered in the USA. As a scientist I'd like to see independently reproduced results across other independent population samples. I think it is healthy to take a more Bayesian approach to these statistics, because you should let your beliefs be updated by additional data and factor in your prior assumptions. Citing data from a single study from a Chinese health agency just isn't enough for me to change my beliefs completely, my prior knowledge is too strong when combined with everything else circulating in the political/regulatory sphere. My personal distributions for what the values of mortality and R0 are both still have really fat long tails. But of course that's subject to change.