Deaths are easy to count. Minor cases of the virus are likely the most common sort, and never show up in a hospital at all.
Numbers don’t line up based on a basic statistical analysis.
Checkout these videos for reference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSIt496d82s
In short, we have no idea, and it’s very dishonest to claim that either number is remotely reliable at this point.
Less severe cases on the other hand have a tendency to end up unreported, not in the hospital. Neither deadly. Still leaves a number of never reported cases. All in all, unreported cases are likely to be higher than unreported deaths. As a result, qualitatively speaking, mortality should be lower.
Of course, but that doesn’t mean that mortality will be lower. A much smaller number of unreported deaths can shift the rate upward. At a 2% mortality rate, you only need one unreported death for every 50 unreported infected to maintain the same rate. That might be laughably high or laughably low. We just don’t know.
But the people in the best position to know, the Chinese government, seem to be taking this pretty damn seriously.
I don't know why they would do that, but they are accused of doing this kind of thing frequently.
If they sat on the news of the virus for an extended period they might have known the mortality rate they needed to align with long before the rest us.