Posted on 03/27/2020 11:42:57 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
As authorities lifted a two-month coronavirus lockdown in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, residents said they were growing increasingly skeptical that the figure of some 2,500 deaths in the city to date was accurate.
Since the start of the week, seven large funeral homes in Wuhan have been handing out the cremated remains of around 500 people to their families every day, suggesting that far more people died than ever made the official statistics.
"It can't be right ... because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?" an Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told RFA on Friday.
"They started distributing ashes and starting interment ceremonies on Monday," he said.
Seven funeral homes currently serve Wuhan -- a huge conurbation of three cities: Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang.
Social media users have been doing some basic math to figure out their daily capacity, while the news website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in one day alone -- double the official number of deaths.
Some social media posts have estimated that all seven funeral homes in Wuhan are handing out 3,500 urns every day in total.
Funeral homes have informed families that they will try to complete cremations before the traditional grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5, which would indicate a 12-day process beginning on March 23.
Such an estimate would mean that 42,000 urns would be given out during that time.
Various calculations
Another popular estimate is based on the cremation capacity of the funeral homes, which run a total of 84 furnaces with a capacity over 24 hours of 1,560 urns city-wide, assuming that one cremation takes one hour.
This calculation results in an estimated 46,800 deaths.
A resident of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, said most people there now believe that more than 40,000 people died in the city before and during the lockdown.
"Maybe the authorities are gradually releasing the real figures, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to accept the reality," the resident, who gave only his surname Mao, said.
A source close to the provincial civil affairs bureau said many people had died at home, without being diagnosed with, or treated for, COVID-19.
The source said any talk of the true number of deaths in Wuhan was very sensitive, but that the authorities do likely know the real figure.
"Every funeral home reports data on cremations directly to the authorities twice daily," the source said. "This means that each funeral home only knows how many cremations it has conducted, but not the situation at the other funeral homes."
The source said Wuhan saw 28,000 cremations in the space of a single month, suggesting that the online estimates over a two-and-a-half month period weren't excessive.
Wuhan resident Sun Linan said relatives of those who died are now forming long lines outside funeral homes to collect their loved ones' ashes.
"It has already begun," Sun said on Thursday. "There were people lining up in Biandanshan Cemetery yesterday, and a lot of people forming lines today at Hankou Funeral Home."
Hush money
Wuhan resident Chen Yaohui told RFA that city officials have been handing out 3,000 yuan in "funeral allowances" to the families of the dead in exchange for their silence.
"There have been a lot of funerals in the past few days, and the authorities are handing out 3,000 yuan in hush money to families who get their loved ones' remains laid to rest ahead of Qing Ming," he said, in a reference to the traditional grave tending festival on April 5.
"It's to stop them keening [a traditional expression of grief]; nobody's allowed to keen after Qing Ming has passed," Chen said.
The son of deceased COVID-10 patient Hu Aizhen said he had been told to collect his mother's ashes by the local neighborhood committee.
"The local committee told me they are now handling funerals, but I don't want to do it right now," the man, surnamed Ding, told RFA.
"There are too many people doing it right now."
Chen said nobody in the city believes the official death toll.
"The official number of deaths was 2,500 people ... but before the epidemic began, the city's crematoriums typically cremated around 220 people a day," he said.
"But during the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremate bodies around the clock," he said.
A resident surnamed Gao said the city's seven crematoriums should have a capacity of around 2,000 bodies a day if they worked around the clock.
"Anyone looking at that figure will realize, anyone with any ability to think," Gao said. "What are they talking about [2,535] people?"
"Seven crematoriums could get through more than that [in a single day]."
I can’t believe China would lie about such a thing.
The one calculation that you can’t inject into this....the normal monthly deaths in Wuhan (just in general, from cancer and murder to food poisoning and old age). With a city of 11-million, you’d figure at least 5,000 folks would have passed away monthly without the aid of the virus.
[The one calculation that you can’t inject into this....the normal monthly deaths in Wuhan (just in general, from cancer and murder to food poisoning and old age). With a city of 11-million, you’d figure at least 5,000 folks would have passed away monthly without the aid of the virus.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#Table_of_births_and_deaths_1950%E2%80%932019
What about the rest of the province? And the rest of China? My guess is a minimum of the low hundreds of thousands. Based on the numbers we’re seeing out of Italy, and merely multiplying by 20 to size up to China’s population, I’d say a minimum of 200,000 deaths.
“COVID-10??”
i can’t believe communists would lie about anything. /sarc
I’m still betting 40,000 is on the low side..minus your 5,000 a month.
Probably 50k after taking everything into account.
They were burning day AND night.
What are the odds? :)
i only give our government the benefit off the doubt 1 out of 10 times
China tells the truth 1 out of 100
The other calculation here, which has yet to be put into the public eyes....getting business operations back up and running (production). I’ve yet to see anything much.
Go look around Europe right now....80-percent of refrigerators sold are Chinese-made. The warehouse operations probably have enough to handle normal purchases up to mid-summer. At that point, if the production cycle hasn’t started up, I see vast shortages of refrigerator units. Same for air conditioners.
If Wuhan lost 250,000, and the other major cities lost similar numbers....major production will not start up for a while, and the replacement workers will produce sub-standard products for the next year or two.
[If Wuhan lost 250,000, and the other major cities lost similar numbers....major production will not start up for a while, and the replacement workers will produce sub-standard products for the next year or two.]
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reference/traditional-chinese-medicine/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_beds
A complete guess based on Italy’s ~10K number today multiplied by 20 to size the number up from Italy’s 60m population yields 200K.
When I was in the USAF we had a term for what is going on with China’s reporting on their virus, “pencil whipping”.
[When I was in the USAF we had a term for what is going on with China’s reporting on their virus, “pencil whipping”.]
We subsidize the bills for this bug, so we get more reported cases. Xi Jinping punishes people for counting new cases, so he gets zero.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/26/821457551/whats-inside-the-senate-s-2-trillion-coronavirus-aid-package
[Hospitals: There is $100 billion for hospitals responding to the coronavirus.]
I don’t have a problem believing China lied, but these stories
don’t really get specific. They mention what things seem like
but don’t mention actual confirmed numbers.
It’s not that I believe the government. It’s just that I am
asked to sign on to other numbers (guesses) I can’t confirm.
It really bothers me when folks curse that the government for
not being forthcoming, and then they ask me to sign on to any
old “seems like” story that pops up.
I can’t verify the government’s story.
I can’t verify these stories.
If I’m not going to sucker for the government’s story, why
would I want to sucker for someone else’s story?
One of the things that has bothered me the most about what
has gone on, is that everyone trashed the government, but
were then willing to take anything offered up as proof positive.
The only thing was, there was no proof on that side either.
Go look around Europe right now....80-percent of refrigerators sold are Chinese-made. The warehouse operations probably have enough to handle normal purchases up to mid-summer. At that point, if the production cycle hasn’t started up, I see vast shortages of refrigerator units. Same for air conditioners.
If Wuhan lost 250,000, and the other major cities lost similar numbers....major production will not start up for a while, and the replacement workers will produce sub-standard products for the next year or two.
thanks so much for your fact-less panic-based screed. it was fun
first nine topics at link pertain to the Wuhan cremations:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/cremations/index
This is impossible.
The FluBros told me to trust the ChiComs.
That is the problem right there. The EU needs a tariff those imports now. The EU needs to stop de industrialization before it is too late, like the USA did foolishly.
bttt
“Estimates are of 40,000 dead in Wuhan alone, over the course of the pandemic.”
That’s a start. I wonder how many there died of the flu last year?
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