[OutsiderFan]

I agree it doesn’t matter what China’s real numbers are or were at this point in time. They really only matter later in time when the complete data set is needed to understand what happened for the sake of history and future learning.

That said, the lack of transparency from China gave countries around the world an inaccurate sense of reality and led to the misinformation about “this is just flu” in many parts of the world.

For me, the only thing I needed to see was the images of all those excavators mobilizing to build an emergency hospital on Jan. 23. That was the canary in the coal mine, and all I needed to see to conclude this thing was a very big deal and China knew it. At that moment I went from casual observer to “I better take this really seriously so I’m prepared.”

[OutsiderFan]

I agree it doesn’t matter what China’s real numbers are or were at this point in time. They really only matter later in time when the complete data set is needed to understand what happened for the sake of history and future learning.

That said, the lack of transparency from China gave countries around the world an inaccurate sense of reality and led to the misinformation about “this is just flu” in many parts of the world.

For me, the only thing I needed to see was the images of all those excavators mobilizing to build an emergency hospital on Jan. 23. That was the canary in the coal mine, and all I needed to see to conclude this thing was a very big deal and China knew it. At that moment I went from casual observer to “I better take this really seriously so I’m prepared.”