To have a full accounting, it's certainly important to learn the truth, so I definitely think we should keeping digging to find out the official numbers, for posterity's sake, among other things. Behind an FT paywall, there's a great article on this, a snippet of which is:
That said, I don't think China's numbers, whatever they are, are that helpful to us now that we have transparent data from examples of relatively effective public health responses (South Korea and Taiwan) and relatively ineffective responses (Italy and Spain). At this point, the most useful thing China is contributing is supplies and knowledge related to treating the virus and developing a vaccine. I certainly would not look to them for examples of public health responses.
The other reason I think this debate is of relatively limited utility is that almost every country's data is pretty suspect whether or not there's been a coverup. For one thing, different countries (and different jurisdictions within each country) have different testing and coding protocols. From the same article:
This means that the numerator of those who have had the disease will never get anywhere near the denominator of the overall population in total, so it would be very hard to estimate penetration rate. Other jurisdictions are purposefully undercounting by declining to test those with "light" symptoms who are instead told to stay at home so as to save tests for healthcare workers and those for whom a positive test might alter the course of treatment. And some countries are so swamped that it may not even be possible to diagnose every death that may have resulted from COVID-19. In countries like Italy and Spain, there are well documented cases of individuals who almost certainly died from COVID-19 but were never diagnosed with it, because in some towns where a dozen or so people died last March, many dozens more have died so far this March, and yet only a handful of those deaths were attributed to COVID-19. For example:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/DellAnnaLuca/status/1242105241350234112?s=20[/tweet]
All of which to say, substituting the soft nationalism of the Olympics with comparative analysis and boasting/shaming about positive case and mortality rates is only so useful. I'd be much happier if our news coverage was focused primarily on what each of us can do and on effective public health responses, drawing on those jurisdictions that have transparent and uniform protocols and seem to have had especially effective responses.
Quote:Experts have highlighted the existence of unreported cases, as well as the large number of asymptomatic cases that the government refuses to publicise in its official tally. It is extremely worrying to continue to publicise ‘zero new cases’ Wuhan nurse Two nurses in Wuhan, who wished to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the pandemic, told the Financial Times of “hidden” infections that met the national criteria for confirmed cases but were not being recognised in the city’s official count, helping to keep it at or near zero. “The medics I know are all telling me that the hospital and the [National] Health Commission are using all their means to control the new case count,” said one of the nurses.
That said, I don't think China's numbers, whatever they are, are that helpful to us now that we have transparent data from examples of relatively effective public health responses (South Korea and Taiwan) and relatively ineffective responses (Italy and Spain). At this point, the most useful thing China is contributing is supplies and knowledge related to treating the virus and developing a vaccine. I certainly would not look to them for examples of public health responses.
The other reason I think this debate is of relatively limited utility is that almost every country's data is pretty suspect whether or not there's been a coverup. For one thing, different countries (and different jurisdictions within each country) have different testing and coding protocols. From the same article:
Quote:The [Chinese] National Health Commission, the government agency that sets guidelines for how cases are reported and disclosed, has always maintained that asymptomatic cases should not be counted in its confirmed case total. Asymptomatic cases are patients who test positive for Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes the disease Covid-19, but have “no clinical symptoms”.
This means that the numerator of those who have had the disease will never get anywhere near the denominator of the overall population in total, so it would be very hard to estimate penetration rate. Other jurisdictions are purposefully undercounting by declining to test those with "light" symptoms who are instead told to stay at home so as to save tests for healthcare workers and those for whom a positive test might alter the course of treatment. And some countries are so swamped that it may not even be possible to diagnose every death that may have resulted from COVID-19. In countries like Italy and Spain, there are well documented cases of individuals who almost certainly died from COVID-19 but were never diagnosed with it, because in some towns where a dozen or so people died last March, many dozens more have died so far this March, and yet only a handful of those deaths were attributed to COVID-19. For example:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/DellAnnaLuca/status/1242105241350234112?s=20[/tweet]
All of which to say, substituting the soft nationalism of the Olympics with comparative analysis and boasting/shaming about positive case and mortality rates is only so useful. I'd be much happier if our news coverage was focused primarily on what each of us can do and on effective public health responses, drawing on those jurisdictions that have transparent and uniform protocols and seem to have had especially effective responses.