[scarmig]

If there are large scale falsified numbers in China, local and national authorities are certainly acting like they believe them. People are out and about; restaurants are opening; going back to work.

I don't get how people can simultaneously think "China instituted unthinkable totalitarian measures to isolate and quarantine people" and "all the numbers out of China are false, it has to be undergoing exponential growth like other countries."

You can choose one or the other, but not both: they're not self-consistent.

[pmiller2]

They are self-consistent if “unthinkable totalitarian measures” didn’t work, and the Chinese government has switched to a mitigation strategy without informing the populace.

[scarmig]

If you think that people being locked up in their apartments for a month would result in the same transmission rates as people going about their lives freely, I don't know what to tell you: apart from all the other fantastic properties people have imagined SARS-CoV-2 to have, it also apparently can magically infect people who don't have contact with it.