WORLDVIEW: What if China’s coronavirus numbers are bulls*#t?

The novel coronavirus was born in Wuhan and spent its tumultuous adolescence in China's Hubei province. Much of our understanding of the adult virus was built on data from the Chinese outbreak. But now, governments around the world are questioning how accurate and complete China's data is..A new report by the US intelligence community concludes that China underreported the number of coronavirus cases it had and the number of Covid-19 deaths. There is some clear evidence of some underreporting – China recently added another 1,500 cases to its count that were originally excluded because the infected developed no symptoms. There have also been images circulating of thousands of urns stacked outside Wuhan funeral homes, raising speculation that the true death toll has been concealed..China has responded to the suggestions that its reporting has been false by saying that the US report is an attempt by the Americans to shift the blame for the virus to cover up its own poor response to the crisis. The US now leads the world in confirmed coronavirus cases, although its death toll remains lower than that of Spain or Italy, and US president Donald Trump long denied the seriousness of the pandemic..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.It's hard to know what's true here. The Chinese government has a long history of suppressing unfavourable information. Much of its economic data, from GDP growth to unemployment, is widely regarded as unreliable and inaccurate by China watchers, who instead rely on private-sector information and trade numbers to assess the Chinese economy. It is also well-documented that, at the beginning of the outbreak, local authorities concealed the scale of the problem out of fear of reprisals from Beijing..Thus, we should probably be taking China's information with a grain of salt. The speed and scale of the outbreaks in Europe and the US, which were forewarned of the coming virus and took measures to slow its spread, suggests at least some underreporting in China. On the other hand, the Chinese government undoubtedly rolled out a very serious lockdown in response to the outbreak, and it has the power and state apparatus to enforce it without worrying about the niceties of human rights. Therefore, it is also reasonable to believe that the Chinese lockdown was effective in slowing the spread..Read also: Aftermath: What will the world look like after the coronavirus?.Whatever the truth about the China outbreak, the stakes are high. Much of our response to the coronavirus has been based on what we learned from the Chinese data. Early estimates of how infectious the virus is and how it is spread, for example, were entirely derived from China's data. As the outbreaks in Italy, Spain, and the US are unfolding, it seems that much of what we expected based on Chinese data was wrong..The virus seems to be spreading more quickly and easily than anticipated. People are asymptomatic for a long time – in viral terms – and infectious during that period. It also seems that there are many more very mild or entirely symptom-free cases than we thought, meaning that the death rate may be lower than expected. In addition, there have been many cases of serious illness among young people in the US, including hospitalisations – the Chinese data suggested young people were rarely hard-hit..In short, bad data from China – whether it was the result of a government cover-up, lack of data gathering capacity, or problems in testing or classifying deaths – may have had a significant and possible deadly impact on our coronavirus response..Right now, we're in the thick of the pandemic. It will take months and years to fully evaluate how the crisis has unfolded and what impact it has had. We may never know the truth about the outbreak in China, given the Chinese government's extensive authoritarian powers and censorship capacity..But I firmly believe that, in the end, democracies will weather this crisis better than their autocratic cousins. At this moment, responses in democracies look messier and more chaotic. Death tolls and infection rates look higher. Economic pain looks more severe..But this is because our responses are being openly debated, not decided behind closed doors. Citizens and healthcare workers are free to report the truth of what they're seeing, and governments are more honest and transparent, data is more accurate and timelier..All of this is good. It means that we can all participate in the fight against the virus, and we can know its real cost. The true death tolls will – all else being equal – be lower in countries that are more open and transparent. We will come through this crisis stronger.

WORLDVIEW: What if China’s coronavirus numbers are bulls*#t?

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