POLL: How many people are #COVID19 infected in the https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇬🇧" title="Flag of United Kingdom" aria-label="Emoji: Flag of United Kingdom"> today?

This is the most important number in the crisis.

It drives:

- Intensive care load (1-4 weeks)
- Death toll (1-5 weeks)
- Fatality %
- # future infections
- #Lockdown approach.

Intuition development ideas below:
Intuition development:

- Start with deaths to date
- Assume infection fatality rate
- That tells you ~# infections 3 weeks ago
- How many times have they doubled since?
- What % have recovered since?
- So how many infected today?

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus 
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavir... href=" https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir...
Threads below include a professional estimate (Imperial) and an amateur one (me).

TL:DR. 2-5m might be infected.

Implies 20-50k deaths in next few weeks even if ICUs not overrun and zero new infections from today! https://twitter.com/JamieWoodhouse/status/1244917380523995137?s=20">https://twitter.com/JamieWood...
I& #39;m hoping our government knows all this in secret and is responding appropriately.

I don& #39;t know why they& #39;re not talking openly about it - as we need some calm fear to help us keep hard #Lockdown.

If, as early on, they& #39;re still underestimating this - we& #39;re in real trouble.
Thanks to those rare journalists grappling with this uncertain, but critical estimate.

@TomChivers @EdConwaySky @alexwickham @Ashley_J_Kirk @PaulNuki @AlbertoNardelli @nicholascecil @jburnmurdoch
How likely is it that the 50% (so far) answering in the thousands...

Aren& #39;t taking the #Lockdown quite as seriously as we need to.

We& #39;ve already "banked" millions of infections and tens of thousands of deaths.

But if infections continue to spread because of weak #Lockdown?
Shocking public complacency in responses so far.

When will journos start asking this most important question?

@maitlis @Peston @AndrewMarr9 @bbclaurak @adamboultonSKY @BethRigby @PaulBrandITV @Emmabarnett @mrjamesob @piersmorgan @pippacrerar @guardianheather @GaryGibbonBlog
Shocking public complacency in responses so far.

When will journos start asking this most important question?

@carolecadwalla @Otto_English @IanDunt @rowenamason @JamesHockaday_ @alexwickham @NickCohen4 @jennirsl
@tnewtondunn @lewis_goodall @faisalislam @AdamBienkov
Given responses so far, here& #39;s how wrong I think 70% of the respondents are:

~3.2 million infected. Implies ~32k deaths in next few weeks assuming ICUs not over-run + zero new infections.

1m infected would imply 824 deaths. We& #39;ve seen ~2,822. https://twitter.com/JamieWoodhouse/status/1245362548200935429?s=20">https://twitter.com/JamieWood...
You can follow @JamieWoodhouse.
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