Of course the mortality is probably higher than reported. It could be much higher. But it is more likely for cases to be underreported by multiples than mortality to be underreported by those same multiples.
From another thread:
Chat with acquaintance in HK.
1. If you dont keep your shoes outside of your house or scrupulously manage them just inside your door and handle them as if you were removing a diseased kidney from an AIDS patient, including immediately scrubbing your hands, forget about the masks, etc. Streets are always filthy, and now they are contagious.
2. 27 Chinese cities are under quarantine, including three major coastal cities. This is a catastrophe. 3. Economic activity has been essentially zeroed out. He has knowledge of a large liquor/food distribution company. Revenues of that company have fallen to zero. Not down, zero. No one is eating in restaurants or bars. Other consumer businesses are likewise in free fall. And no business, not even Microsoft or Apple, can survive for more than a month or two with zero revenues. Zero, not down, zero. Entire factory districts are empty. Not just one factory, miles of them.
4. The Chinese banking system will collapse. When your loan customers have zero revenues, you have zero revenues. Of course, the government will print money, but so what.
5. All modern distribution systems are built around just in time delivery. If you quarantine a modern city for more that 48 hours, everything starts to run out.
6. The quarantines make no sense in light of what has been publicly stated about the disease. To be effective, a quarantine must be longer than the incubation period and the infectious period. That period means probably a month. China will not survive a month long quarantine.Thus, why bother?
7. The gov is now driving large trucks up and down city streets with fogging equipment. Giant clouds of who knows what.
7. HK has four routes in, and weirdly, only three have been cut off. It appears, that keeping a road open into HK (heavily guarded and checked, but nevertheless open) is more important to the commies than keeping 27 huge cities open. Hmmm..... He observes that HK has always been the way out of China.
8. He was already in the US when the SHTF, his issue is he cant go back (not that hes all fired up about that). But he was standing in the local big airport, and heard a US customs person ask a person of Chinese persuasion if they had been to Wuhan in the last month. My friend almost burst out laughing. A. Saying yes is an automatic 14 day quarantine, so no one in their right mind answers yes. And the US has no means of verifying the answer. B. Just Wuhan? 9. The Partys response to the published nature of the disease is entirely disproportionate. The Partys actions are consistent with an end of the world disease. Not a bad case of the flu. 27 closed cities?
Fogging trucks? If one assumes the leadership has a reasonable level of IQ, an instinct for self preservation, and some reasonable level of IQ among its advisers, something much worse than a bad case of the flu is on the loose.
Other than that, everyones doing great. /Im not buying masks, Im buying disposable booties.
//oh, forgot. The countries sending aircraft in for their nationals are not being nice. They are being scared sh*tless that said nationals will make it back into their home countries on their own, if left to their own devices. The planes are flying prisons.
Correct, very important, has to be said over and over.
Each death yields a body. Yes, they can be disposed of discreetly, but somebody, somewhere, knows.
Minor illnesses where the person recovers? We have no idea.
It is likely that BOTH infections AND mortality are being underreported (probably infections to a greater extent). What does that mean? Well, the disease is far more communicable than generally thought (the common cold is a corona virus - people usually get at least one per year, and what does THAT tell you?), but it is probably not lethal to large percentages of people until/unless a medical system is overwhelmed. Bottom line, MANY more people could be infected, so even if the mortality rate is lower than some think (i.e. let’s assume for the moment that is actually IS at about 2%), that is still a massive number and will result in massive effects (not the least of which is a severe economic slowdown as fearful people stay home). IOW, this is no joke.