Why would you take any numbers from the Chinese at face value? Nobody else in the world is. Everyone knows they’ve been lying to all of us from the start. They didn’t warn anyone how serious this was and Italy got slammed with no warning as a result.
It’s being taken seriously because it’s already killed over 165,000 American citizens in just a few months and it’s nowhere near over. Without a vaccine (which President Trump has assured us is coming very soon), we could eventually see that number climb over 500,000 up to possibly 850,000 or so.
This goes to my point. I’m not willing to believe those numbers are real. They have been massaged, twisted and manipulated to create a false picture of reality. “Cases” and “deaths“ are being conflated in the public’s mind; patients who die “with” Covid are reported as having died “of” it, etc.
This whole thing has the foul stench of political expediency. I’ll wager a million dollars that shortly after the election the aura of urgency about it will quietly evaporate.