Here’s a simple model projecting COVID-19 deaths.
In the US, with a population of 329m people, an estimated 80% being mild or non-symptomatic, and a 2.37% case-fatality rate, you can deduce that at present, 0.33% of the US population has been infected with COVID-19.
Assuming the same case-fatality rate, you then take this model to project out that 5% infection = 78k deaths, 10% infection = 156k deaths, 20% infection = 312k deaths, and herd immunity of 80% = 1.2m deaths. If the case-fatality rate increases, so do the deaths.
In Italy, an estimated 0.92% are infected, and the case-fatality rate is 11.9%. Those two figures applied to the US population results in 72k deaths.
The two ways to avoid this are a) reduce the case-fatality rate through better medical care, and b) reduce the infections through quarantines, social distancing, masks, etc.
It should be noted here that in the absence of a vaccine, 80% of the population wearing masks to prevent further spread is akin to achieving 80% herd immunity, minus the mass detention. It would be great if common sense prevailed.
The COVID-19 fatality model excel sheet is available below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ixsm507u0rk0v8/covid19-fatality-model.xlsx
I also want to add, per this model, with a population of 1.4 billion people, only 0.0284% of Chinese were infected.
In other words, in China, the land of make believe numbers, with 0.0284% infected, and a case-fatality rate of 4.1%, those two figures applied to the US population results in a mere 768 deaths.
?
Either Chinese numbers are total bullshit (they are), or China took some brutal actions to enforce their quarantine (they did), and it should have been obvious from the beginning those actions could never be replicated in a free society.
To try to uncover more realistic Chinese numbers, if you assume and apply the Italian 0.92% infected rate to China, and accept the Chinese 4.1% CFR (not really, but whatever), that results in 105k Chinese deaths.