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While im extremely skeptical of China's numbers (by default it's safer to assume that all known case counts in any country are well off the real numbers of case

While im extremely skeptical of China's numbers (by default it's safer to assume that all known case counts in any country are well off the real numbers of cases that haven't been counted) China did use far harsher measures to stop spread (the biggest, most total quarantine of hundreds of millions of people, applied in just weeks), while the U.S has so far not done that or anything close to it, and was very slow even to react to the extent that it has so far. This could thus partly be a case of accusing the other side of lying because you look so bad that blame needs to be spread around even if they did things differently to mitigate their situation better (maybe). Also, China published the vast majority of major case growth/death figures before they (or anyone else really) knew just how bad things would get in Italy, Spain and other countries, yet their mortality rates more or less match a certain global average (they're in fact a bit worse than average) so why would they have lied in such a specific but also partially statistically realistic way? Why not publish less cases and lower death figures if they were going to lie their asses off anyhow? I don't think they're telling the truth, especially about total known cases and total deaths, but maybe they didn't conceal quite as badly as claimed, and harsher measures partly explain the differences in numbers between the U.S and China. Most of all though, it's important to know if whatever concealment they did also distorted: 1. claimed mortality RATE, and 2. if the spread of the virus has been more or less contained finally, as they claim it has. These two are the most important things, more important than actual numbers being off by some margin or another.

notechback 7y ago
If they do collect actual numbers but report much lower numbers it should not be too difficult to give realistic ones. Right now the Chinese state media is making a huge effort to paint the virus as a 'foreign' issue, claiming that there are now no new local infections but rather just infections brought in from abroad. This is rather obviously absurd, but it's also obviously an effort to shift blame while claiming a high ground. The Chinese leadership can pretend competence and blame others for any fault - pretending that it wasn't them that started the whole mess to begin with. India (of all countries) had a severe virus outbreak a few years back - immediately local doctors reported it, containment measures were in place and the case numbers stayed somewhere around two hundred. China had the same, but arrested whistleblowers, officially denied everything and only admitted things when the scale and spread was so bad that it couldn't anymore be denied. Still we don't know the true scale and numbers and never will.
- xster 7y ago
  How is it "obviously absurd"? We've been the ones lamenting that China's been going full dystopia "welding people inside apartments" all the way back in January. Also for those who read beyond the title: "the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials. The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret, and they declined to detail its contents." And here I am still waiting for Bloomberg to write the other half of their supermicro chip story.

notechback 7y ago

If they do collect actual numbers but report much lower numbers it should not be too difficult to give realistic ones. Right now the Chinese state media is making a huge effort to paint the virus as a 'foreign' issue, claiming that there are now no new local infections but rather just infections brought in from abroad. This is rather obviously absurd, but it's also obviously an effort to shift blame while claiming a high ground. The Chinese leadership can pretend competence and blame others for any fault - pretending that it wasn't them that started the whole mess to begin with. India (of all countries) had a severe virus outbreak a few years back - immediately local doctors reported it, containment measures were in place and the case numbers stayed somewhere around two hundred. China had the same, but arrested whistleblowers, officially denied everything and only admitted things when the scale and spread was so bad that it couldn't anymore be denied. Still we don't know the true scale and numbers and never will.

xster 7y ago
How is it "obviously absurd"? We've been the ones lamenting that China's been going full dystopia "welding people inside apartments" all the way back in January. Also for those who read beyond the title: "the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials. The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret, and they declined to detail its contents." And here I am still waiting for Bloomberg to write the other half of their supermicro chip story.