Has an honest mortality rate been established?
No, it is currently believed that authorities in Wuhan (Hubei Province) under reported initial cases due to a provincial committee meeting that occurred at the start of the outbreak. Initial cases (and there is indication currently) were mis-categorized as pneumonia deaths. There are current concerns or indications that local authorities in that region are still doing so, and possibly turning away patients with pneumonia if they do not exhibit a fever. Also, a documented case of a 10 year old with ‘walking pneumonia’ but otherwise asymptomatic.
The scope of the outbreak did not come to light until around the 20th, with testing from a lab in Shanghai. As Wuhan has two level 4 labs built to test for this stuff, it is believed that local authorities were attempting to hide it from the Central Committee in Beijing.
On a side note, Friday night I went to bed feeling pretty decent as there had been no documented cases (that I was aware of) where transmission occurred outside of Hubei. I woke up Saturday with notification of two separate incidents consisting of three persons in total, where the transmission occurred outside of Hubei.