China must have majorly downplayed their figures, right?

[Louise000000]

We are now over 5,000 deaths and China just over 3,000. This isn't even possible is it, how have they managed to cover up their true numbers here?

@sobeyondthehills

It's here, Chinese mobile phone users are down by 21 million. It's the first time user numbers have declined since records began in 2000. The article speculates that the reason could be due to workers cancelling second phones, however surely some of these must also be due to deaths from the virus.

China has banned foreign journalists and tried to silence the whistleblowers who raised the alarm in the first place.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-03-23/china-s-mobile-carriers-lose-15-million-users-as-virus-bites

China is still persecuting doctors who try to whistleblow about deaths

No Western country is doing that
Most are trying to say how terrible it is and pleading with their people to stay home

China may easily have 10 or 20 or 40 x the reported deaths

In a country of 1.4 billion spread over a vast geographical area

• and run by a ruthless dictatorship -

it's not difficult to hide deaths

The Chinese regime have murdered millions of their own people over their 7 decades in power,
so they've had plenty of practice at covering up mass deaths

whettam I had medical professionals calling me paranoid, one of whom went on holiday to Italy and refused to isolate when they came back because it was a fuss about nothing. A week later their workplace was covered in posters saying people must isolate if they'd been there.

My specialists were contacting people from start of March about the severe risk it represented. I had a social worker laugh in my face.

The details were there, or lack thereof, and it was blindingly obvious there was some creative statistical analysis going on.

If anyone thinks the WHO can be trusted when it comes to China, just watch the interview with senior WHO official Bruce Aylward. Asked about whether the WHO would reconsider Taiwan's membership and also how they thought Taiwan had been dealing with the virus, he remained silent, then pretended he couldn't hear the journalist, then hung up on her.

A lot of the kit China has "donated" in grand gestures to European coutries was found to be defective and had to be junked

That's PPE and test kits

Wuhan is only one city in the locked down province of Hubei!

Yes. Somewhat suggests that the scale of deaths has been massively understated, no?

China can bully the WHO doctors into silence, much like it bullies its own doctors

It's about power and intimidation applied by a ruthless dictatorship

Maybe the virus has mutated slightly so we aren't dealing with exactly the same thing as China is

Becca creative statistical analysis 😂

maybe the keyboard they released the deceased figures from had a faulty 0

It is very easy to cover up the deaths they just recorded them as pneumonia rather than covid 19. Also because of the country's massive population it is even easier to cover it up. The WHO had no oversight.

And as for China itself, they are still denying the Great Famine of 1959-61 that killed 30-45 million! That was over 50 years ago, they are still covering it up. So it's pretty obvious they are lying now.

Yeah, honestly, I think the Chinese stats are likely to be as reliable as a chocolate teapot. They've been consistently arresting whistleblowers throughout this crisis, and are no doubt keen to demonstrate that they have things under control so business can resume.

I think even a child incapable to of decducimg that China has lied about its figures. The only thing up for discussion is the extent of the deceit. The Chinese Communist party has a lot to answer for.

Many deaths in China were probably recorded as pneumonia back in December and early January as doctors were not looking for a novel virus.
If I had been ill back then, am sure my doctor would have assumed it was flu so lots of cases have been missed, as nobody knew back then to look for them.

Whether we believe the numbers or not, they do seem to have things under control. I am not basing this on numbers, but rather what is happening in my community.
My ds’s grade goes back to school tomorrow.

Hubei locked down on January 23rd when they’d had 24 recorded Coronavirus deaths in China, all of them elderly people. Do I believe that China ordered lockdown and risked their entire economy on the basis of 24 dead pensioners? Absolutely not.

Yes, it makes no sense whatsoever. There were either many hundreds dead to prompt the lockdown then, OR China knew what it was and what it could do.

Not just Hubei. I live in Jiangsu and rumours re spread of virus were circulating on 23rd January and by 26th we could not enter the supermarket without a mask and all restaurants, cinemas etc were shut.

According to analysis by Radio Free Asia, the official death toll in Wuhan of 2,535 may have been underreported by almost a factor of 20. The news organization cites reports that seven funeral homes in the city were each handing out 500 funeral urns with the remains of suspected COVID-19 patients daily for 12 days from March 23 to the traditional tomb-sweeping festival of April 5, which would indicate up to 42,000 urns in total. Other estimates based on the capacity of funeral home furnaces puts the figure at 46,800. None of the funeral homes in Wuhan contacted by TIME were prepared to comment.

There was a nurse from Wuhan who in February I believe did an interview saying that the estimated death toll for the city based on what medical personnel were reporting was about 10,000. That was before they hit their peak and things started to slow down.

I would agree that the very harsh lockdown there no doubt did save a lot of lives, but the figures are still unreliable. If you don't understand why or think people saying so are just "bashing" for no good reason then you know nothing about the history of the Chinese government.

I will never buy anything made in China again. As a teenager I went through a phase of this because of Tibet, but it is easy to forget when you are busy raising kids and paying a mortgage. Covid-19 has brought that sharply into focus.

@BigChocFrenzy
Let’s hope not all the kit is defective. On the bbc news tonight all hospital staff were wearing face shield from China.

Wow, there are some amazing leaps of inference and unsubstantiated statements/numbers flying about here.
I don't see how this helps anyone right now. There are countries who handled this well, and they are pretty much all places which were heavily affected by SARS. They knew what was needed - Taiwan, Singapore, S Korea. Surely that is more useful than conspiracy theories and wild accusations?

Thanks @Ticklemeelmo that is the article I was reading

South Korea has handled this very well, which is in large part because of the measures they put in place post SARS.

Yes, Taiwan too.

What on earth do we know about China, frankly?

I live in Mexico and have obviously been following what is happening in Mexico, where we have a very weakened health system thanks to previous governments, but where our current president put a top epidemiologist in charge as soon as news came out of China.

And I've been following what is happening in the UK, starting with the fact that the government didn't even start to pay attention until March and then it came up with the plan of herd immunity.

I think we would all do well to look to what our own governments are doing and whether or not they are doing enough, rather than worrying about countries on the other side of the world.