First, that blog post was written by an employee of a bio-tech company and argues that the government should spend whatever bio-tech and pharmaceutical companies demand without any public backlash. Any conflict of interest?
Secondly, the blog post is poorly written, especially for an employee of a bio-tech company. I work at a small company. When I have written blog posts and magazine articles, my company sends them an outside editorial company. They don't edit my content, but do: change words, change sentence order/structure, add transition elements, etc. to make the articles more pleasant to read. I would think a bio-tech company would do the same.
Finally, this isn't "extrapolated" data. He takes bad data (which he admits is bad) and multiplies it by arbitrary numbers. He multiplies the death rate by 1/2. His justification? He knows that it is probably less than what has been reported, but infection rates might be higher. In other words, it is simply a guess.
I would almost guarantee that the rates in the article are not realistic. It is only "almost" because even a blindfolded person throwing darts has a chance of hitting a bulls-eye.
What would you do if you knew that a few hundred people in your community were infected with this virus? Do that now. Do what the CDC has been recommending:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/home/get-your-household-ready-for-COVID-19.html
Unfortunately what many people are going to do is: Ignore the CDC recommendations. Panic when there are confirmed cases in their community. Follow some "fad" recommendations from Facebook (stigmatizing infected people, wearing nitrite gloves, purchasing face masks, purchasing sterilizing air locks for their doors, etc) The really bad thing is that people will follow such fads and still ignore the CDC recommendations, like wearing nitrite gloves but still touching their eyes.
