> The FT chose to run with an inflammatory headline, assuming an extreme value of ρ that most researchers consider highly implausible. The headline "Coronaviru

> The FT chose to run with an inflammatory headline, assuming an extreme value of ρ that most researchers consider highly implausible. The headline "Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study” is not really out of line with the preprint the article talks about. What's questionable is that it was a good idea to write about the preprint at all. "Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries." "Our overall approach rests on the assumption that only a very small proportion of the population is at risk of hospitalisable illness. [...] Three different scenarios under which the model closely reproduces the reported death counts in the UK up to 19/03/2020 are presented in Figure 1 . [...] [In two of those scenearios] By 19/03/2020, approximately 36% (R 0 =2.25) and 40% (R 0 =2.75) of the population would have already been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. [...] [The third scenario] suggests that 68% would have been infected by 19/03/2020." The secondary headline “New epidemiological model shows vast majority of people suffer little or no illness” was much worse as that's the assumption in the model and not the result. It was changed to "New epidemiological model shows urgent need for large-scale testing" in the amended article. > Since its publication, hundreds of scientists have attacked the work, forcing the original authors to state publicly that they were not trying to make a forecast at all. "Attacked" sounds as if the criticism was unwarranted.