[duxup]

I think being skeptical of numbers from China is reasonable.

Historically speaking even inside China it is a pretty well known quantity (even openly spoken of in China) that local governments are hesitant to give bad news to the central government until it is too late and so on. The result usually is the central government is behind the ball dealing in broad (sometimes less than useful) strokes until things are resolved.

As far as any conclusions you can draw such as "well it must be much worse". I think that is pure speculation.

Specific speculation that isn't founded in much and IMO not helpful. The scale and wonkyness of China's efforts could be because this is a very dangerous / misunderstood disease ... or the massive efforts simply a byproduct if poor internal information / a product of the political nature of China.. panic by their leadership (historically they're very wary of any unrest of their own population), or both.

Skepticism of some information from countries with proven track records of not being forthcoming / have had issues with accurate information is reasonable. Conclusions based in nothing, not so much.

[bluGill]

I think China has reached a tipping point in this one though and local governments are giving the information they have to the central government. When this started hiding things was a reasonable policy for the local governments, but now that this has so much international attention I think it is clear to everybody in local governments that being caught hiding anything is worse than whatever good could come out of the best case of hiding something.

Do not mistake the above for local governments having good information to give. I'm also not sure if China is giving everything out either publicly or internationally.

Of course I'm just an outside observer with no inside knowledge making what I think are reasonable guesses.