I find it curious that people are so skeptical of China and Vietnam's numbers. A government might be able to hide some percentage points, or even an order of ma

I find it curious that people are so skeptical of China and Vietnam's numbers. A government might be able to hide some percentage points, or even an order of magnitude of the spread. But hiding more than that is pretty impossible in this modern day age. Especially a place like China with high internet penetration, proximity to Hong Kong and a population of overseas relatives in the millions. People may recall the Chinese citizens risking their lives to leak in the ground footage onto YouTube - I can't imagine that would stop if things were bad in China. So 0 cases might be 10 or even 100. But it's hardly going to be 10000 or 10000000. It also shows a huge ignorance towards cultural attitudes towards both authority and contagion. I know plenty of Chinese people who sheltered long before governments told them to due to covid. They were prepared to cancel Chinese New Year rather than whine about the poor sadness of missing Christmas. And when the government issued orders plenty were willing to listen and trust the authorities. Yes the Chinese people are not infallible: people went to hotpot and whistleblowers were wrongly imprisoned. People also protested in Wuhan. But man seriously we like to scorn communist countries for having their propaganda but if you are comfortable preaching "their numbers are fake" you're buying into the western rhetoric that China can't have been better than us. In any case if it is so hard to imagine China and Vietnam achieving containment of the virus maybe some friendlier examples include our friends in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.