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I imagine China is severely underreporting the numbers. I got downvoted last time I suggested it, but this is a modern day, protectionist, authoritarian state w

I imagine China is severely underreporting the numbers. I got downvoted last time I suggested it, but this is a modern day, protectionist, authoritarian state which controls what its people can say and see.

majewsky 7y ago
I don't know what particular phrasing you got downvoted for, but if it's along the lines of "China is authoritarian, therefore underreporting", that's a a non-sequitur and I can see why it would get downvoted. What is true is that authoritarian regimes regularly use misreporting when it's in their own interest. If you want to make a solid argument, you need to explain why it is in the Chinese government's interest to underreport infection numbers. For example, I could even imagine it being in their interest to overreport the mortality rate so they can afterwards boast about how effective their measures were in containing such a powerful and deadly disease. I don't say that's what happened, but it's within the realm of the imaginable.
- scruple 7y ago
  They officially reported 144 influenza deaths in 2018, out of 700,000 infected. Would you prefer it if we said, "They use dramatically different statistical methods?" Lies, damned lies, and statistics, etc... Why? God only knows.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    I would prefer if such evidence had been included in the initial post to make for a full argument.
- allovernow 7y ago
  It isn't just the fact that it is authoritarian, it's the combination of authoritarianism, protectionism, and an evident practice of lying to its own population in order to force narratives. Sure some of this applies to the U.S., but we don't have social credit scores or unmentionable events like Tiananmen. I imagine one strong motivation could be that the CCP is trying to delay or prevent quarantine on the global stage, which would cripple the Chinese export based economy. Could be justified with the assumption that although numbers are worse, China expects it will nonetheless successfully contain the outbreak before other nations need to shut down flights and such. Governments lie all the time. Communist style dictatorships like China and North Korea are particularly guilty, as their authoritarian rule depends on misinformation - not to mention in decades past, underreporting of negative data was not unheard of, for example in harvests of food when regions were in famine. We have nothing to go on but China's word for these figures and their entire government is predicated upon varying degrees of misinformation. Any data which could possibly paint China in a negative light should be scrutinized.

majewsky 7y ago

I don't know what particular phrasing you got downvoted for, but if it's along the lines of "China is authoritarian, therefore underreporting", that's a a non-sequitur and I can see why it would get downvoted. What is true is that authoritarian regimes regularly use misreporting when it's in their own interest. If you want to make a solid argument, you need to explain why it is in the Chinese government's interest to underreport infection numbers. For example, I could even imagine it being in their interest to overreport the mortality rate so they can afterwards boast about how effective their measures were in containing such a powerful and deadly disease. I don't say that's what happened, but it's within the realm of the imaginable.

scruple 7y ago
They officially reported 144 influenza deaths in 2018, out of 700,000 infected. Would you prefer it if we said, "They use dramatically different statistical methods?" Lies, damned lies, and statistics, etc... Why? God only knows.
- majewsky 7y ago
  I would prefer if such evidence had been included in the initial post to make for a full argument.
allovernow 7y ago
It isn't just the fact that it is authoritarian, it's the combination of authoritarianism, protectionism, and an evident practice of lying to its own population in order to force narratives. Sure some of this applies to the U.S., but we don't have social credit scores or unmentionable events like Tiananmen. I imagine one strong motivation could be that the CCP is trying to delay or prevent quarantine on the global stage, which would cripple the Chinese export based economy. Could be justified with the assumption that although numbers are worse, China expects it will nonetheless successfully contain the outbreak before other nations need to shut down flights and such. Governments lie all the time. Communist style dictatorships like China and North Korea are particularly guilty, as their authoritarian rule depends on misinformation - not to mention in decades past, underreporting of negative data was not unheard of, for example in harvests of food when regions were in famine. We have nothing to go on but China's word for these figures and their entire government is predicated upon varying degrees of misinformation. Any data which could possibly paint China in a negative light should be scrutinized.