If something has to give, it seems to me like a strong possibility it's the R0 range estimate. Authorities, and to some extent media, in my country have been ve

If something has to give, it seems to me like a strong possibility it's the R0 range estimate. Authorities, and to some extent media, in my country have been very tenacious in trying to reassure people. Often up to the point of outright disinformation. At the start of this week the pacifier statement in vogue was that the mortality rate estimate is inflated because the severe cases are those who self-present for care. and thus testing. so if one counts all the cases, including the undetected ones, a much smaller fraction are lethal. Well, that one's true, but the flip side of that, which nobody here has wanted to address so far, is that to the extent the transmissibility is calculated based on corresponding data, that estimate is going to be deficient instead, because it's failing to include some of the contagion that resulted in cases that went undetected. Hopefully the people making the estimates know better than that because of other data sources, but the main one I can think of (maybe aside of South Korea's broad biochemical testing, which may be a relatively unbiased sample according to my perception?) is contact tracing of confirmed cases. And I think it's downright likely that at least our contact tracers would miss fomite transmission and persistent aerosol transmission until now, because the party line touted here, at least officially, is "you get the disease though close contact over a long time with someone who is sick" lately expanded to include "or if somebody coughs or sneezes at you" (emphasis mine). The other thing I can think of to somewhat reconcile the observations is even if the virus has a high durability in the environment, the total transmission process would be contingent on other factors too, one of which is the dose needed to get an infection going. I have a life science background, but not specific expertise in this area. Would appreciate if someone has good clarifications to share about how accurate the transmissibility estimates are likely to be and why.