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.<p>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).<p>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?<p>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.<p>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.
"Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."<p>It's a little too convenient that the US blew so many weeks of lead time in getting mass testing running. We don't need to suppress information about our virus outbreak when we simply don't have data about it. We literally would've had a better response if the CDC didn't exist at all and individual states weren't impeded from running their own tests. The Seattle Flu Study was explicitly forbidden from testing for coronavirus, and their refusal to obey that order on ethical grounds was probably the reason that they're not suffering New York's fate right now.<p>Not to absolve China here, but it's a classic sin of nations to hide epidemics (see "Spanish Flu") and they probably aren't even the most egregious sinners today.
Not even that, but the WHO was forced to give critical information to China and was not allowed to communicate with Taiwan.<p>Taiwan handled it very well luckily! They never had any information from China and that helped them more than us who had "access" to that information, probably faulty info none the less.<p>What an absurd situation.<p>It's becoming more clear that the WHO was misled by the "positive news" from China and based a lot of guidance on that.<p>While the Western world gets infected, the virus gets real numbers eg. Infection rate, mortality, ...<p>If it wasn't clear that Taiwan is a seperate country before, it should be now.
As a modeler, in a field unrelated to pandemics and epidemiology, my first reaction was that the estimates of CRF, IFR and R0 are going to be wrong. Which in turn is going to produce wrong estimates from all the models.<p>First, they did not shutdown the wet markets which they should have right after SARs, then they concealed the outbreak for weeks or months and now they are lying about the numbers.<p>How can the Chinese government keep doing this and think they are going to keep getting away with it? They are willing to invest 100s of billions in One Belt One Road to project power but this takes down their credibility by many notches for vast swathes of people around the globe.
"Conceal" implies intent--while I do not believe the Chinese numbers I do not think it's malicious, but rather an overwhelmed system. We are seeing the same thing everywhere the system is getting hit hard enough--patients are dying without ever being tested, and they're only testing the people at the hospital, thus missing most all the mild cases.<p>The only places I would trust the numbers are South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Israel.
What did the CIA or NSA been doing in the mean time with all that budget ... aren't they supposed to be informed of all things affecting national security around the globe ???.<p>Did they really expect that an adversarial superpower would admit to the scale of their problem ... the US should have been way better prepared.
Clearly the west dropped the ball in important ways, but guidance from the WHO was certainly bad and seemingly deferential to China and its reputation. But if there’s evidence the data and reporting is “concealed,” on top of the clear silencing of doctors (Ai Fen and others), this is egregious.
First of all, nobody knew what it was, what it did and what it could do when it first hit. No one said, "oh, this is the coronavirus COVID-19, and this is the test for it." All this had to be discovered as it got worse.<p>I want to know why this pandemic blew up right after the mysterious vape flu in August last year that has the exact same symptoms as COVID-19 and why this flared up in Wuhan after soldiers from all over the world, about 200 from the US, were in Wuhan for the World Military Games.<p>Wet markets and exotic meats are all over China. Why did it just start in Wuhan?
It is painfully obvious that china concealed the beginnings of the outbreak, no matter your personal political beliefs, or nationality.<p>To assert anything else, particularly under the guise of (so and so also did this), highlights your comment as insincere. Lets keep the politics out of HN.
Typical techniques used by "professional" "journalist" to cover up and diverge the real issue, which is the incompetency of the US government.<p>You see when you fail at something, isn't it easy to blame someone else, rather than looking at yourself?<p>And REMEMBER these journalists are PAID to write.<p>And YOU, the reader, are only able to comprehend what you are prepared to hear.
I'm curious what actual infection and death rates are in China- there seems to be no mentioning in the article. Given what is happening in Italy and Spain, its probably horrible. :(
How come Korea had it under control so quickly, "given" that China "obviouly" "conceled" the information?<p>Blame blame blame...more blame
does anyone take US intelligence seriously any more? seems we have a fairly reliable years-long evidence trail that says it might not be worth it any more.<p>either they're legitimately incompetent (tons of sabre-rattling about the China "threat" yet no intel operations; likely hasn't been rebuilt after China publicly executed tons of spies [quite an effective deterrent it seems]) and they're saying as much here, or they're just deflecting outrage on an external entity doing typical IC stuff, which is complete noise.