Had we followed your advice last March, what would have happened?
Case growth followed an exponential curve up until about a week after the shutdowns began. (From Feb 01 to March 24 or March 29, 2020). This part is just fact. Look at a log scale graph of case counts.
Back then, you wanted us to believe it was not exponential. Had we followed your advice, case growth would have continued on an exponential path until something else slowed it down. What would that have been, and when would it have happened?
If you are relying on widespread natural immunity to act as the brakes, the slowdown doesn’t really start until you are over 50% seroprevalence. How many deaths would you have had up to that point?
You can estimate it. IFR back then was 0.7%. Our treatments were not very good yet. So, 330M * 0.5 * 0.07 = 1.15M deaths. That is a kind estimate, since it assumes absolutely no degradation in the heath care system. Once you account for that, you get the 2.2 million Imperial College estimate.
Which brings us back to the original point. Those initial restrictions saved us between 0.5 million and 1.5 million deaths, depending on your assumptions about what happens when you run out of health care facilities.