My point is that the early numbers could very well be true, the fact is the first death date is China is reported as what 14th January? 4-6 weeks after it was first noticed so what 6-8 weeks after it first came to pass.
They is nothing to say at the beginning the data they released wasn’t accurate it was just later as it started getting worse and out of hand that they realised and shut it all down.
Yes Asia has handled it better because of SARS and other countries such as Taiwan and South Korea managed it instantly as soon as they realised
And yes the UK Gvt handling may well make ours worse than other European countries that is not the point. China’s data is odd and the flattening of the curve given what we know now about how long a lockdown takes odd
Which then means you have to ask the question could the Chinese Government cover it up, is the way that it is run enough to make any reports of it scarce and can it’s not like they don’t have form
But that also doesn’t mean the US don’t want to push it as well to make them look better
All of these things as I keep on saying aren’t mutually exclusive of each other. Pretty much all handling of this from our gvt to the US, Chinese gvt and the WHO have screwed up and made it worse
Why? A mixture of the unfortunate fact the Coronavirus is novel and as much as allout wants to say the WHO are experts they are in their field just not about this incredibly new virus. So that put everyone on the back foot from the start. They are learning though
And the denial pretty much everyone started from a point of denial
But that is where if the figures were massaged (and let’s face it pretty much everyone’s figures are at this point) China didn’t let us see how bad it was
And that’s the other thing we are still learning about the asymptomatic cases that alone throws all figures out
Data is an incredibly useful tool. But it is not nor will it ever be incontrovertible proof it can’t be start and end user bias always comes into play. Take DNA evidence held up as the gold standard of someone’s guilt. But it doesn’t it says their DNA was there not how it got there