[Filibuster_60]

It's probably too early to tell how much SARS is being undercounted. We have to remember that a very large percentage of China's population has respiratory ailments of some kind to begin with, so the difficulty in enumerating SARS cases isn't simply a matter of dishonest officials.

It's interesting that SARS infection rate has apparently tapered off in both Hong Kong and southern Guangdong province where it originally came from. In those two places at least, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, as they're highly integrated with the world economy and major outbreaks are virtually impossible to cover up. If SARS decimates the workforce of some toy factory manufacturing products for an MNC, I wonder how they can prevent that from being known.

[Future Useless Eater]

It's interesting that SARS infection rate has apparently tapered off in ... Guangdong province where it originally came from. ...I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt...

ummmm, not so fast... Guangdong had a rapidly rising 'probable' case count which flat-lined overnight. They are lying as is almost all areas of China other than perhaps Beijing.

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• China's 'official' numbers in the charts and their recent 'improvements' are bogus.
• They abruptly stopped ALL REPORTS of NEW 'PROBABLE' cases in most places (besides Beijing) about 3 weeks ago.
  Here are some examples...

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Inner Mongolia (province) - TOTAL 'probable' case count
                                    Jun 02 (284 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
April 28 (114 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
[abrupt change occurred May 10]

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Guandong (province) - TOTAL 'probable' case count
                                    Jun 02 (1511 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
April 28 (1395 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
[abrupt change occurred May 10]   ...vertical scale = 1350 to 1520

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Tianjin (municipality) - TOTAL 'probable' case count
                                    Jun 02 (175 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
April 28 (43 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
[abrupt change occurred May 14]

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Shanxi (province) - TOTAL 'probable' case count
                                    Jun 02 (448 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
April 28 (243 TOTAL 'probable' cases)
[abrupt change about May 14]   ...vertical scale = 200 to 450

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The only way these graphs could flat-line SO ABRUPTLY is China cheating
on their reporting, and to stop reporting any new SARS cases as 'probable'.