I strongly recommend giving that Twitter thread a look (click the "see more tweets" to expand it), where author also explains why he had to write so many words.

I strongly recommend giving that Twitter thread a look (click the "see more tweets" to expand it), where author also explains why he had to write so many words. By "mental gymnastics" I assume you mean "needlessly drawn out argumentation/reasoning". The essays contain very little of that and are densely packed with arguments and links. Only exception is in Past IV where he gets technical explaining why China's data does not violate Benford's law as some have suggested. The tldr is that there is little evidence to support the charge of "deliberate cover-up" during initial outbreak or subsequent data fudging.