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]."
Estimates are essentially fake news
made up, untrue
“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.”
One of my kids has a very large chest freezer that he’s not using and doesn’t need. I figure as freezers start to break down in the US, and the replacement supply is dry, it will be worth more and more - maybe enough to pay for his prepping!
Communist governments lie. Oh wait, all governments lie.
JoMa
It’s all part of the plan to show us how much we need big government and globalism. Notice how effed up it is.
I don’t believe any of the numbers, especially those numbers out of China, Italy, or any other socialist rat hole.
This is all a bunch of shite.
Very true. Something we need to keep in mind.
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.]
No telling what the Wuhan deaths are, normally, without access to official Chinese stats but deaths for China as a whole were 7.14 per 1000 population in 2019. Wuhan has 11m people, so monthly deaths would be 7.14 x 11,000 / 12 = 6,545. Assuming the numbers cover a 3 month period, and the low estimate of 42,000 urns over that period, that’s 42,000 - 3 x 6,545 = 22,365 excess deaths over the normal run-of-the-mill death numbers, which is likely explicable by the covid-19 pandemic. And that’s just in Wuhan.
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.
...
My frustration is when I question the assumption people make that we haven’t seen the worst yet in the U.S., and that we will be like Italy or like China, they assume I don’t think this is real.
My energy is praying for people globally, and acting locally. If we make the grossly overreacting actions to stay shut down, then we’re doomed. We have to take chances and get working again. For example, Wilmington, NC beaches home owners cannot rent out their investment properties now. That is insane. Foreclosures will skyrocket. Next Monday, PDJT needs to take the heat and tell people to go back to work .yes, I said that.
China needs to pay a serious economic price to the globe after all of this is over, not only in starting, concealing and facilitating the spread of the pandemic but in continued intentional misdirection in data analysis to the rest of the world hampering its fight against the pandemic they started. They are not a first world democratic nation and they should not be treated as such. Return them to an agrarian society where they belong under communist rule.
Because China lies to try to cover up it’s inability to coordinate any sort of actual solution...now the propaganda is aimed as much at her own people as it is to the rest of the world...
On the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Info site, for three days China was claiming ‘no new cases’ and their number stood at 81, 897. They have upped it by 99 this morning. China is OBVIOUSLY lying. But I have Leftist friends who are claiming that China has beaten this virus and we should follow their model.
Ignorance abounds in the USA. I WISH everyone would just tell the truth out there.
But, for three days, the confirmed cases in China (on the Johns Hopkins Site) stood still at 81,897. How can there ever be over 100,000 deaths if only around 83,000 (updated by 99 more today) have been confirmed cases in China?? (Big S)
Naaah. Can’t be. The chinese are honest AF and are the worlds “besties4EVR”.
I hope the Chinese people rise up and consume the chicoms.
“The FluBros told me to trust the ChiComs.”
Really? The Covidiots have pushed the news of Chinese crematoriums running 24/7 and wooden doors magically being welded shut as proof that the Omega Man virus was upon us from day one.
Thanks, Zhang Fei! Good counts, good estimates, considering the many eyewitness reports coming out of Wuhan over the months. So sorry for the overly indebted folks who lost money from the disaster that they didn’t plan or save for.
Political class services/government interests are lying here in the States and helping to spread the disease, too, BTW.
Washington ER doctor loses job after criticizing hospital’s coronavirus response
https://www.foxnews.com/us/washington-doctor-loses-job-criticizing-coranavirus-response
What happened to the sarcasm tag?
Hey, if folks needed a /sarc tag for that, they’re too dumb to be participating here.
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