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.