There are many people working throughout health care and government who would get very angry if they learned that the figures were being artificially suppressed, and there is an independent press that would be eager to report on it. And now that many prefectures are reporting zero cases and deaths on most days, if some people there had in fact been recently infected or had died, they or their families would notice the discrepancy and raise a stink, too.
I live in a Japan, and it is a relief that, at least for the moment, the infections have dropped so low. The nationwide figure on Monday was 50 new infections, the lowest in a year and a half. I doubt, though, if anyone who follows the news from Europe believes we’re necessarily out of the woods yet.
[1] https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en
That's exactly what a government shill would say. /s
But seriously, I never found Hanlon's razor particularly convincing. The conspiracy theories usually say that there is some entity ABOVE your government that hands down the orders to the oblivious politician actors. Compartmentalization[0] is a common method in the military and intelligence community to keep the majority of their minions in the dark about the true nature and extent of their work.
Take Snowden for example: none of the (according to wikipedia) 30,000-40,000 internal employees stepped forward to blow the whistle on NSA's pervasive and illegal dragnet surveillance. It took Snowden, an external contractor of all things, to do what's right.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_(informat...