The numbers of new #COVID-19 cases being reported out of China are not believable; China must be underreporting them
FWIW, I for one no longer believe the numbers of new cases being reported by the People’s Republic of China, or the claim that the country has succeeded in suppressing #COVID-19.
I no longer find the numbers being reported (typically one of two dozen new cases per day) to be believable. 1/17
The novel #coronavirus has a high transmission factor: is apparently mutating rapidly; and has a pathological profile that makes case tracing *very* difficult. (As for the latter factor, see Osterholm at 3:30+) 2/17
Furthermore, the Chinese numbers have always differed from the finding outside China that a significant number of young people become seriously ill from the virus, and that a large percentage of carriers are asymptomatic. 3/17
The high level of asymptomatics, which was found in the all-community, total population study of the village of Vo, Italy (pop. 3,300) provides one of the most striking differences from the statistics coming out of China. 4/17
According to the World Health Organization team that was sent to Wuhan, “The proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.” (This findings is reflected in this chart.) 5/17
China first reported declines in new case numbers (R0 < 1) in early to mid-February, but an article in Business Insider on Feb 19 compels us to question how reliable these figures could be. 6/17
Business Insider (2/19): Preliminary research suggests that Wuhan alone could have 19 times more cases than reported, possibly even 26 times more. 7/17
Business Insider (2/19): The high percentage of asymptomatics on the Diamond Princess cruise ship suggests that many coronavirus carriers throughout China were going undetected. 8/17
Business Insider (2/19): A more recent analysis estimated that only one in 19 infected people in Wuhan have been tested and diagnosed. 9/17
The study also found that there was a 50% chance that people carrying the virus had traveled to at least 128 cities in China before the quarantine began. (5 million Chinese from Hubei province escaped before the lockdown went into effect.) 10/17
Combining all these considerations with the known characteristics of this almost uniquely dangerous and lethal virus makes me think it unlikely that China has or ever will be able to suppress or control this disease (absent a vaccine), as it has claimed. 11/17
Nor does the CCP have a history of honesty and transparency in reporting on pandemics. It was severely criticized for delaying to inform the world health community about the outbreak of the the 2003 avian flu pandemic, 12/17
and it is becoming increasingly clear that the Chinese government became aware of the danger of a new pandemic as early as November, and suppressed the finding. 13/17
China does deserve credit for publicly addressing and applying unprecedented, even draconian, measures to contain the virus in Wuhan beginning in December, but those late. though laudable, efforts inflicted severe damage on the Chinese economy. 14/17
Recently, China has been forced to relax the controls, leading to concerns about a resurgence of the disease. (The recent study by the health commission in the U.K. was hopeful that a resurgence was avoidable, but didn’t express any high level of confidence that it was.) 15/17
All I am suggesting is that skepticism, or at least caution, about the future needs to be applied to the present.
Xi Jin Ping may not be able to survive politically if the economically damaging virus suppression effort in Wuhan turns out to have been a failure. 16/17
I am by no means an expert on any of this (so keep that well in mind). I am just trying to apply common sense, which tells me that 13 new cases for all of China is simply not believable, given what we are finding about other countries and new findings about the virus. 17/17
PS/ Most experts are now predicting that SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic worldwide. There is no reason why China, where it originated, should prove to be an exception.
