[Cicero]

I doubt whether they even know or care how many ordinary Chinese have died. If they can't pay, they don't get into the hospital. That's the new Communism for you. For all we know, hundreds of thousands might have died by this time, and we'd never hear about it.

[FreepForever]

Even if every health officials in China comes squeaky clean and report all known SARS cases honestly as it is, the final figure still doesn’t reflect any truth of the situation.

There are tens of thousands of small counties and villages in rural China that have no hospitals, just a dismal clinic. People can catch the decease -- go to the village’s barefoot doctor -- get some herbal medicine -- go home and get his family and neighbors infected -- struggle to stay alive -- failed and go to see Carl Marx -- buried and forgotten. This entire process, which keeps repeating itself and spread like wild fire, is happening outside the government’s existing medical system. No control, no statistics.

Due to the inherent deficiency of China’s medical system and infrastructure, which is too primitive to cope with this kind of epidermic, my conclusion is: WE WILL NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH.

I have been keeping track of the figures but lately, I have given up. Under the existing system, the numbers are meaningless. Since China is the biggest contributor to the world total number of cases, this deficiency is also rendering the world figures meaningless.