we have now had more deaths from covid 19 than China!

[EricaNernie]

That is so shocking and awful.
remembering how impressed and worried we were about china building new hospitals almost overnight, and the lockdown
and now it is here.

Taiwan having learnt from SARS & having scepticism in relation to China started monitoring passengers arriving from Wuhan in Dec & banned flights from Wuhan on the 26/01.

I doubt it.
That’s my point.
Taiwan took a different course of action and went against WHO advice. They have a very low number of cases for a population of over 24 million. Different approaches will inevitably affect final figures. I don’t know if China is lying, but the extreme action they took will have had an impact. No other country has taken the same action as China both in terms of lockdown and contact tracing. So comparisons between China and Italy are inevitably flawed.

Exactly
Their action has had a huge impact on cases.
But when we look at China we say that lower cases are because they are lying.
I am sure china’s cases are higher eg many cases and deaths in dec and early January were probably recorded as pneumonia when they were covid 19, but they didn’t know that yet. If I had had flu symptoms back in dec my doctor would not have been looking for a suspicious new virus.

OP you need to finish the sentence.... 'than China has ADMITTED to.'

China have not given the real figures,
however seeing how the British are undisciplined, (compared to all but Sweden) going out for an ice cream, inviting people for BBQ, picnicking in the park, finding wild excuses why they don't need to isolate, I fear the worst.

I am another one who believes china is not being truthful.

But Taiwan acted much faster than China (it was the Dec pneumonia cases in China that triggered Taiwan's action) & people travelled for NY celebrations so personally I think it has to have spread further before they contained Wuhan, it's a country of 1.3 billion!!

It says a lot that you would believe the impossible numbers issued by a communist dictatorship without question, but not trust a single word coming out of the UK government

It's also interesting that the Telegraph is today reporting a coordinated propaganda campaign which is being conducted on global social media with the explicit aim of silencing criticism and diverting blame to America. It's interesting how there are so many enthusiastic proponents of a totalitarian regime's talking points online.....

@ShanghaiDiva so do you believe that when China told WHO in mid January there was no evidence of human to human transmission this was the truth?

It's interesting how there are so many enthusiastic proponents of a totalitarian regime's talking points online.....

I’m sure it’s just a wild coincidence, Bovary...

and while a report by Caixin on the Chinese province of Heilongjiang said that a considerable percentage of asymptomatic cases has not been reported—which amounts to about 50 percent more known infections in China, according to a South China Morning Post report on classified government data—WHO takes numbers reported by Beijing at face value. “I thought the greatest success of the Chinese party-state was in getting the WHO to focus on the positive sides of China’s responses and ignore the negative sides of the responses” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the SOAS University of London. “With the WHO presenting China’s responses in a positive light, the Chinese government is able to make its propaganda campaign to ignore its earlier mistakes appear credible and to ignore the human, societal, and economic costs of its responses

I’m sure it’s just a wild coincidence, Bovary

No doubt. The use of social media to spread regime propaganda. The repetitive talking points. The fanatical defense of dubious statistics. Just a coincidence.

@mochajoes
I don’t think that was true.
From a purely anecdotal perspective when friends and I were looking at the situation in Wuhan (and I live 280 miles from there) we were assuming human to human transmission.

Bovary
You are the one that posts the same points, over and over again...

This is from the Washington Post article:

Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes have returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation from Radio Free Asia, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800. Wuhan residents say the activities belie the official statistics. “It can’t be right . . . because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a man identified only by his surname, Zhang, told RFA

Hmm. Higher than the official chinese figures. Which I think are massaged ever so slightly. I mean, they reckoned there were 0 new cases after their lockdown last I read. No way did it go down to 0.

Visiting academic colleagues from China in the early days of the pandemic stated there was gross underreporting in China. They were very worried.
They spooked my husband into stocking up on essentials months before any hint of it here.

China had 55 new cases yesterday according to the data I access.

@ShanghaiDiva

Do you have anything to say about the reports on the concerted social media propaganda campaign conducted by China?

www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/04/05/china-floods-facebook-instagram-undeclared-coronavirus-propaganda/

@ShanghaiDiva then surely they have the capacity to lie about other aspects?

I cannot access the link.
I think some of the announcements China has made recently eg comments by zhao lijian were frankly embarrassing.
Without a doubt, China needs to take responsibility for this if the country wants to have any future credibility.

For those interested in the questions about China's official statistics, this Washington Post article is worth reading.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-families-should-be-sweeping-graves-now-but-thousands-still-havent-buried-their-dead/2020/04/03/5a6daa50-7234-11ea-ad9b-254ec99993bc_story.html

China had 55 new cases yesterday according to the data I access.

And are they claiming these are from foreigners/tourists or domestic?

Shanghai I value your perspective as someone who also has lived in China. You must understand how the local authorities have reason to lie and obfuscate not only to the WHO but to the central government in Beijing. Look what happened with the swine flu in 2019; local officials again lied and gave an inaccurate picture to central authorities.

Taiwan, more than anywhere else, understands that nothing from China can be taken at face value and shut their doors before anyone else iirc.

@mochajoes
Of course.
Numbers are higher, without a doubt but I believe that the tough action they took saved lives. I think it is a little simplistic to say they are lying because their figures are so much lower than Italy. The two countries did not respond in the same way. This is why I use Taiwan as an example as it’s an outlier in action that was taken and also an outlier in number of cases.