The tone behind chiefalchemist's comment is not appropriate ("Communist China" intends to evoke specific emotions, which doesn't have a place on hackernews). T

The tone behind chiefalchemist's comment is not appropriate ("Communist China" intends to evoke specific emotions, which doesn't have a place on hackernews). That said, while the citation for this is unlikely to be widely trusted, there is a kernel of truth here. Can't find a specific citation for the reason behind the underreporting, but the underreporting has been widely discussed, as has the misinformation campaign attempting to relocate the source outside Hubei. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavirus-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavir... In any case, I'd like to see more research that accounts for totals from only countries that are accurately reporting their data. Unfortunately, that might not be for a while until e.g. Iceland has a chance to give their numbers now that they're testing literally 1/8th of their population. As other comments have suggested, cruise ships could also be another good data source. Looking forward to constructive discussion on whether or not numbers from countries such as China and Brazil can be trusted.