[makomk]

None of those objections seem right at all. The coronavirus deaths so far have been long, drawn-out affairs compared to the recoveries, so there's no particular reason to expact recoveries to lag deaths. We know China has been undercounting deaths as well as cases, and in any case thse estimates in this are based on non-Chinese numbers. Also, transmission outside of China hasn't just "petered" out - it was aggressively stamped out via contact tracing, which is why the non-Chinese numbers are likely to be a fairly accurate total count of infections. It's obviously pretty infectious judging from the clusters we've seen when someone from China who's infected does make it outside, and that level of contact tracing probably isn't going to be viable forever or in less developed countries.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

> The coronavirus deaths so far have been long, drawn-out affairs compared to the recoveries

No, it took until several weeks into the epidemic until the number of recoveries exceeded the number of deaths.

> We know China has been undercounting deaths as well as cases

All deaths are counted, people don't just leave corpses lying around, although it is true that many coronavirus deaths were likely misclassified. By comparison, if someone gets a mild case (80%+ probability) and recovers at home, they'll never get recorded in any stats.

> it was aggressively stamped out via contact tracing

In some countries like Singapore, yes. But in countries like Thailand and Mexico, contact tracing was haphazard to nonexistent, and epidemics still failed to materialize.

[koheripbal]

> the number of recoveries exceeded the number of deaths.

China has said the fatality rate is about 2%, and most experts are agreeing it's probably roughly 2% - with all your points factored in. In Wuhan, for example, it's over 4% due to hospital overload.

> All deaths are counted... many coronavirus deaths were likely misclassified.

That's really the same as being not counted in the tally of Coronavirus deaths.

> in countries like Thailand and Mexico...

The common theme here is tropical climate that makes most Coronaviruses less virulent.

This obviously cannot happen in countries like North Korea, which is likely silently enduring a pandemic that they just won't talk about.

[GolDDranks]

It still makes a difference whether a death is counted as "death from COVID-19" or "death from pneumonia suspected to be COVID-19 (unverified via tests)" or "death from pneumonia (undiagnosed)" or "death from unknown cause". They changed the counting method once before, counting now more.