Earlier quoted context omitted.
let's say there were 320,000 people without symptoms in China, which seems unlikely, that would make the total cases approximately 400000, and if we just looked at the fatalities so far out of that it would be a fatality rate of 0.8% iirc the common flu is 0.1% fatality, so if this only had 0.8% but affects 40-70% of the world (which seems to me like it would be at the 70% end if there are lots of asymptomatic people…
> 320,000 people without symptoms in China Wuhan (the city, not even the entire province of Hubei) has 11 million people. Given what we know now about how virulently and covertly COVID-19 spreads and how (relatively late) Wuhan went into lockdown, how do you feel about that number?
I'm not taking the exact 75% number here in the following - but close, and I will do some hasty approximations.
Current total cases (maybe off by some hours) is 80,894.
80894 is 20.2% of 400000.
400000 - 80000 = 320000.
So yes, given the article's premises 320000 is pretty much on the optimistic side for humanity.
on edit: but once again my math is probably off somewhere so correct it if you see some glaring error in my reasoning. Also note these numbers are for China, of course.