China Makes Itself A Laughingstock

China is a country that cares more than any other what outsiders think of it. And then in November there comes along this whole Wuhan coronavirus thing. How humiliating.

At first they tried to pretend that it did not exist. By December that wasn’t working any more; the word of a new disease was out. The next move was reporting to the WHO that the virus was a local phenomenon related to the Wuhan seafood market, but would not spread from person to person. Here is a WHO report from January 12. Key quote:

The government [of China] reports that there is no clear evidence that the virus passes easily from person to person.

That line also didn’t last long. January 23 is the date that China imposed severe “lockdown” restrictions on Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province. By that date the number of cases of the novel virus in China had already begun to explode. Worldometer has been tracking cases by day and by country. Here are their data for China. By late January China was reporting several thousand new cases per day, and by mid-February that number went above 10,000 per day. The peak day was February 12, with over 14,000 new cases reported. On March 1, China crossed the threshold of 80,000 reported cases, and 2900 deaths, far more than any other country as of that date.

But by then, the official government narrative had changed. Now it was no longer that the disease was not a threat, but rather it was that China, foremost among the world’s countries, was achieving a rapid and heroic victory against this new enemy. The number of new reported cases and new reported deaths then fell not in some reasonable downward curve, but rather precipitously to just above zero. Oh, and this coincided with China expelling major independent journalists, including from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post, on March 18. Here are the officially-reported figures for new cases and deaths in the days after that (from Worldometer): March 19, new cases 39, deaths 13; March 20, new cases 41, deaths 7; March 21, new cases 46, deaths 6; March 22, new cases 39, deaths 9; March 23, new cases 78, deaths 7. And the pace continues at about those rates.

The New York Times, apparently not offended at all at having its people expelled from China, has gladly accepted the assignment of being the official mouthpiece for Chinese propaganda about the heroic success. On March 18 there was a piece from a guy named Javier Hernandez. Excerpt:

China on Thursday reported no new local infections for the first time since the coronavirus crisis began three months ago, reaching a milestone in its battle with the deadly outbreak that has upended daily life and economic activity around the world. . . . China has hailed its success as evidence of what can be achieved when a vast, top-down bureaucracy that brooks no dissent is mobilized in pursuit of a single target.

And then there was this piece from Donald McNeil on March 26, completely accepting official Chinese government figures in making the comparison with the U.S.:

In the United States, at least 81,321 people are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, including more than 1,000 deaths — more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen, according to data gathered by The New York Times.

The problem is that the numbers coming out of China are completely preposterous. Among those expressing skepticism, to their credit, have been Richard Bernstein at RealClearInvestigations on March 25, Matt Margolis at PJ Media on March 26, and Paul Mirengoff of Powerline on March 28.

If you are wondering who might be right, check out this post at something called the Shanhaiist on March 27. Excerpt:

One photo published by Caixin shows a truck loaded with 2,500 urns arriving at the Hankou Mortuary [in Wuhan]. The driver said that he had delivered the same amount to the mortuary the day before.

And there are 8 other mortuaries in Wuhan, where the total number of deaths from the virus are supposedly around 2600.

And there’s this from the RCI post:

On the very days when the national health authority was announcing that there were no new local infections, social media accounts in China were circulating photographs of “urgent notices” put up in residential areas announcing new cases and warning people to stay home.  EBC News, a Taiwan cable news network, broadcast two such photographs dated March 20, which is two days after China reported there were no new local Wuhan infections.

The world needs real data from China in order to understand infection rates and mortality rates from this disease, and thereby to make decisions as to the degree of extreme steps to take to contain the threat. Clearly China’s official numbers are way too low. But are the real numbers double, ten times, or a hundred times?

I suspect that Xi himself would like real numbers, but everybody in the reporting chain is scared to death that revealing the truth will get themselves fired or executed. This is how an authoritarian country comes out being a laughingstock.