But as an outside observer just watching the stats, here's my biggest reason for being suspicious regarding the number. Right now there's five other provinces (Guangdong, Zhejiang, Henan, Hunan, and Anhui) with more than 800 confirmed cases.
For context that's the level Hubei (Wuhan) was at three weeks ago. To contextualize when Wuhan had O(1000) cases, before full quarantine, the infection was growing at a rate of 50-100% per day. In contrast all of the aforementioned provinces are now currently keeping growth below the target of 10% per day.
Now obviously, the infection control process will improve over time as we learn more about transmission. But none of those other provinces are in full quarantine like Wuhan. And yet, every single one of them is doing a remarkably better job than Wuhan was at the comparative point in the infection. In fact they're all doing even better than Wuhan did after it locked down to full quarantine.
That kind of rapid improvement in disease transmission control over the span of a few weeks is hard to believe. Every single province seems to be hitting their targets on every single day. Compared to a few weeks ago, the public health improvements are almost too large to be believable. Most likely, I'm being paranoid, but it does smell a little fishy.
One reddit user fit a quadratic curve to the infection rate some time ago and used it to predict the number of infections.
https://old.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/f0anox/uantimonic_a...
This is how the figures have grown for confirmed cases, i.e. number of positive test results that came back. Not "actual real number of cases", which I'm sure the healthcare professionals and politicians in China are all aware of, as everyone else should be. It's already been clearly recognised that Wuhan/Hubei botched the early part of managing the epidemic, so the discrepancy you point out is pretty expected.
Now granted, the articles are anecdotal and not statistically representative, so there is some extrapolation in these assumptions. The actual numbers are probably somewhere in between.
Is it that China is underreporting new infections for the neighboring provinces now, or that they mis-reported stats of Hubei before?
Anyways, I must say I find it a little disconcerting to see such a statement (which I can only describe as fear-mongering) from the director of the WHO on a public plattform. Does he not have the means to contact officials directly and tell them what they should prepare for? His "call for calm" is 3 tweets in ffs
What doesn't work for day to day life (dictatorship), works great in such cases. Complain about quarantines if you dare.
China is the one really affected so whatever they're doing, so they have every incentive to do it right. I see falsifying as a possible way not to spread panic but that's white /gray lie, all countries should prepare for the worst.
The priority is, of course, to stop a 21st century plague from happening. When/if such an event occurs, it will have a vast effect on the daily life of millions and millions of people, whether they are infected or in danger, or not.
Social fallout from mass panic is almost as dangerous as an actual viral plague could be. They've happened in the past, because people weren't prepared - so sure, we should not be lying about it.
There is responsibility to have a survivable world, after such events occur - governments plan for recovery too, not just prevention and control - so the panic of the global populace, at scale, is one thing that can have a massive effect on whether there is a society to rebuild 'after the cure is found'.
The point is that folks should be observant that there are two massively dangerous potential events occurring here: 1. Coronavirus, and 2. Agitprop/Counterprop being used to re-shuffle the world economic scene, prematurely as it seems in some cases, but preparedly in other cases, too.
Seems like someone is estimating 250k "potential" cases? Google Translate isn't very clear here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic#Comparisons_...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22738893-estimated-global-mo...
I don't see any of the scares or complaints of under-reporting from back then. So what's the difference here, the fact that the disease originated from China? Seems pretty racist to me.
Anywho, I gave you an actual link of a pubmed article about the H1N1 2009 outbreak being under-reported, yet the criticism is once again about China controlling information flow. Where is the criticism of under-reporting from the US and Mexico H1N1 outbreak from 2009 and 2010 and controlling the information flow? I don't remember any of that, do you?
There is now growing belief that China is under-reporting. Primary evidence for this is that the stats fit too neatly to a curve extrapolated from previous releases. Would actual deaths occur so tidily? Secondary evidence is that China's response seems significantly larger than expected based on the statistics they are releasing. Judge by actions not words, and all that jazz.
This doesn't conclusively prove tampering, but at minimum suggests there is some rate-limiting factor influencing the figures. Shortage of test kits or test lab throughput, perhaps.
Either way, if China is under-reporting it puts the rest of the world at a disadvantage information-wise, and that leads to inadequate preparation and response.
Assuming this is true, Dr. Tedros is in a political pickle. True transmission and mortality rates will become apparent once the virus spreads in countries that can't or won't falsify figures.
On the basis of all of the above, which I admit is by no means conclusively proven, this Tweet makes a lot of sense. It provides a stepping-stone in messaging from fawning over the CCP to providing more aligned-with-reality messaging on the developing pandemic. When the dust settles, I wouldn't be surprised if any stats differences between China and what we see in the rest of the world is pinned on 'mutation'.
A more generous take is that Dr. Tedros had to gush about China to avoid non-cooperation, but is now trying to move past that and back into a messaging space where the WHO can best prepare the rest of the world to respond appropriately.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert and I spend far too much time in the sewers of the Internet to have an objective opinion. This is just a summary of the more plausible speculation I'm seeing.