Coronavirus worse than reported

Fox News ^ | February 16, 2020 | Lew Olowski

[ProtectOurFreedom]

China’s novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has killed and infected more people than officially reported. In one day, total reported infections and deaths increased 44% and 23%, respectively...merely because “the government changed the criteria by which it tracks confirmed cases.”

The official tally has been an underestimate and is still catching up to reality. About 99% of the cases have been reported in China.

...before the adjustment, circumstances suggested weeks ago that “the outbreak is spreading far beyond the official count of cases.” Many causes contribute to this undercounting.

1. the diagnostic test for COVID-19 may be only 30-40% accurate.
2. the diagnostic test is scarce. Tests are rationed for the most obviously symptomatic patients. But carriers can be asymptomatic. And they can be contagious before showing signs of infection.
3. Chinese hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients; only those who obtained medical treatment and also tested positive for the virus were included in the official tally.
4. resources and public attention have concentrated on Wuhan, a city of 11 million. Tens of millions more live in Wuhan’s surrounding province, Hubei, which is less equipped with healthcare services. To the extent uncounted cases exist in Wuhan, more uncounted cases exist in Wuhan’s exurbs.
5. politics also prevents an accurate appraisal. China’s communist government is a totalitarian, one-party state.

The severity of the Chinese government’s actual response to COVID-19 is a more reliable indicator than the disease’s publicly acknowledged tally. While admitting to just 17 deaths from the virus, the party quarantined a region of about 60 million people. This decision guaranteed multibillion-dollar economic losses.

It is inconceivable that the Chinese government would wilfully suffer such a cost for the sake of a few dozen — or even a few hundred — lives.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Good article - worth reading.

[Vermont Lt]

Fox News is right on top of it.

[Moonman62]

Lew Jan Olowski

Lew Jan Olowski is an international and national security law attorney in Washington, D.C.

...

People should know that Fox has this labelled as an opinion article. The author isn’t a health professional.

[Paladin2]

https://pandemic.warroom.org/

[KingLudd]

No shit, Dick Tracy.

[DoughtyOne]

Wow FoxNews, that’s pretty good reporting of what most folks have known for weeks now.

How’d you do that?

[Celtic Conservative]

There are three types of lies: Regular lies, damn lies, and Chinese government statistics.

CC

[Rashputin]

China runs on cutting corners, bribes, and family ties allowing some people to ignore the rules. For all the talk about how powerful the Party is, until a few heads roll for not doing their job, nothing is so serious that it rocks the public out of their business as usual.

When the local officials in Wuhan decided that having a hundred thousand people share an open pot shared meal was an important way to keep the public from knowing there was a dangerous virus on the loose while they tried to figure out what was going on, a pandemic was all but inevitable.

JMHo

[preacher]

L8r

[CincyRichieRich]

It is inconceivable that the Chinese government would wilfully suffer such a cost for the sake of a few dozen — or even a few hundred — lives....

...
That is a problem right there. Under estimating your enemy’s deviousness.

[CincyRichieRich]

I don’t even think the Chinese government as an estimate of how many people died building the Three Gorges Dam. They gave him the deadline to move and there are probably several hundred thousand who died. The Chinese don’t mind losing many people if it attains an end that their government wants.

[minnesota_bound]

I cannot believe the Chinese communists would lie to us.....

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The author pulled a lot of disparate things we’ve been reading for a while into a coherent whole / big picture. Nothing wrong with that; it’s a good contribution to the body of info, especially for people who are not as widely read and educated on this bug as the typical FReeper. Need to view these articles not through the lens of the smarties here on FR, but of the common man (nobody here is “common”).

[DoughtyOne]

Perhaps so.

I’ll have to admit to thinking most folks have heard of the body bag pickups and the cremation going on.

There probably are people out there who haven’t though.

[LeonardFMason]

No more flights from CHINA!

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

All your healthcare resources are belong to us.

[Boomer]

Since 80% of our meds are made in China; this will have a huge and profound effect on us (and much of the world) at some point unless this thing is contained.

[rlmorel]

"...That is a problem right there. Under estimating your enemy’s deviousness..."

I find it hard to underestimate a country that in living memory murdered between 40 and 120 million of its own people...murdered them for political reasons.

I don't think there is any evil that government is incapable of.

[null and void]

Fox the fox
Year of the rat
Infect the ape
I know about that

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[LilFarmer]

https://twitter.com/freethinkbird/status/1229097388431704065