A range that large is nearly useless, though. Maybe nearly nobody will die, maybe it will be another Spanish Flu. That's true of every flu strain that has ever

A range that large is nearly useless, though. Maybe nearly nobody will die, maybe it will be another Spanish Flu. That's true of every flu strain that has ever infected anyone. He was arguing as if there was no reliable information at all. But there was plenty of information at the time that pointed at the low end being very unlikely; he just didn't believe in any of it. It turns out that he was almost certainly wrong not to take it more seriously: that information, incomplete as it was and is, was nevertheless pointing in the right direction.