[Jim Noble]

First of all: No one knows what the real numbers are. The government of China certainly doesn’t know.

But the “leaked” numbers you just reposted are a misreading of Chinese (I don’t read Chinese, either, but I follow these numbers that are posted closely).

As of the day those numbers were posted, 24 589 were “confirmed cases” and
154 023 were persons under observation.

[PIF]

Other Chinese native speakers on FR confirmed the actual wording as correct. It was not misread.

[Excubiae]

First of all: No one knows what the real numbers are. The government of China certainly doesn’t know.

True. But the government of China has a much, much better idea than anyone else. They are going to have a ballpark guess that will not be as ludicrous as the official numbers (they are almost certainly instituting random testing across all provinces, they will also have a good idea of how many bodies the crematoriums are processing, etc.).

They won't know the exact number (they don't even know the exact number of SARS victims, even now). But they are going to have a very good idea of how many digits are in those numbers.

[Lady Heron]

It was not misread. It was quickly taken down and that was posted on the 1st.

You do not make many 1,000 bed prisons to stick people in for 600 dead in China. This thing is very, very bad in China. I am not sure it will effect anyone else this badly because of several theories but for China they are lying about the numbers and the dead and have been since the beginning. Someone posted a video of the US bring Americans back from Wuhan. It was hinted that this video was leaked on purpose to send a message to China, basically we know. We had our military in level 4 bio suites.