[burger]

I use Occam's Razor on China numbers.

The U.S. already has more cases than China. That tells me China numbers are phony baloney.

China has what, 4x the U.S. population?  And, China - though it did enact tougher restrictions than the U.S. has or ever will and mobilized nationally - was asleep at the wheel for what, 6 weeks before really acting at all?  

If Italy says it has 10x its reported cases, China probably has 20x.

The ONE mitigating factor that must be the devil's advocate position is China, like other Asian countries made mask wearing mandatory.

Sorry, but this is silly, and you are making things up with zero evidence.  Occam's razor does not allow you to make things up.

China did wait weeks to start responding.  But they started with probably a single case.  Exponential growth is surprisingly slow at first, and it may have been several weeks before they even had a detectable number.  Meanwhile, the China death rate reported is roughly in line with what other countries have reported, and the characteristics of their deaths are similar to those from other countries in terms of age, comorbidities, etc.

No doubt the China numbers are underrported due to lack of testing, but almost every country's numbers are underestimated for the same reason.

If you're going to accuse China of making things up, show me some evidence.  There are too many conspiracy theories around this virus as it is.  I'd like to think that a community of Stanford alums can be more evidence-based than the public at large.

Oh, and speaking of masks... I was chatting with someone from India on Skype this morning. She told me police are hitting people with batons if they aren't wearing masks when outside, and then telling them to pull their shirts up over their mouth and nose if they don't have one. India is terrified of a big outbreak for obvious reasons, but we all in the U.S. should be wearing masks too!

We went to the grocery store yesterday, and maybe 5-10% of people were wearing any kind of mask (including us--we made our own).  Increasing that number could go a long way towards decreasing the rate of spread.

[burger]

I use Occam's Razor on China numbers.

The U.S. already has more cases than China. That tells me China numbers are phony baloney.

China has what, 4x the U.S. population?  And, China - though it did enact tougher restrictions than the U.S. has or ever will and mobilized nationally - was asleep at the wheel for what, 6 weeks before really acting at all?  

If Italy says it has 10x its reported cases, China probably has 20x.

The ONE mitigating factor that must be the devil's advocate position is China, like other Asian countries made mask wearing mandatory.

Sorry, but this is silly, and you are making things up with zero evidence.  Occam's razor does not allow you to make things up.

China did wait weeks to start responding.  But they started with probably a single case.  Exponential growth is surprisingly slow at first, and it may have been several weeks before they even had a detectable number.  Meanwhile, the China death rate reported is roughly in line with what other countries have reported, and the characteristics of their deaths are similar to those from other countries in terms of age, comorbidities, etc.

No doubt the China numbers are underrported due to lack of testing, but almost every country's numbers are underestimated for the same reason.

If you're going to accuse China of making things up, show me some evidence.  There are too many conspiracy theories around this virus as it is.  I'd like to think that a community of Stanford alums can be more evidence-based than the public at large.

Oh, and speaking of masks... I was chatting with someone from India on Skype this morning. She told me police are hitting people with batons if they aren't wearing masks when outside, and then telling them to pull their shirts up over their mouth and nose if they don't have one. India is terrified of a big outbreak for obvious reasons, but we all in the U.S. should be wearing masks too!

We went to the grocery store yesterday, and maybe 5-10% of people were wearing any kind of mask (including us--we made our own).  Increasing that number could go a long way towards decreasing the rate of spread.