It doesn't seem to pass just a basic level of consistency with present experience to believe that with no mitigation New York would only have 13.5k deaths when they already have 5.5k+ (and we know many more that have not and maybe will never be confirmed).

Even the idea of 41k at this point beggars belief, they are already well over capacity with some mitigation and the bodies are literally piling up.

I find it hard to wrap my head around the logic here.

My thought is since this is a new virus it will spread faster, and hit peak sooner. Also, those who are most affected are a small portion of the whole population, which will again imply faster time to peak.

> I think only South Korea is the other country with extensive testing.

South Korea has tested a tiny fraction of their total population, because the testing is largely targeted via contact tracing.

It isn't about proportion of population, but whether they are only testing people already admitted at the hospital, which will drive the estimate up, or testing the wider population, driving the estimate down. SK is doing the latter through contact tracing.