[Majromax]

> When you do widespread testing as China did in Zhejiang you can find a lot of mild cases. Indeed, Iceland, which did the same, has 1020 cases and 2 deaths.

Two significant notes, however:

* China reports that its outbreak has largely resolved. The vast majority of the 1,000 cases in Iceland are still active, so we don't know how many deaths Iceland will eventually have. South Korea's current fatality rate still seems to be around 1%, with many cases yet to resolve.

* China seems to include only symptomatic cases in its total. That should bias its fatality rate upwards, since the denominator does not include any asymptomatic people who resolved without developing a full case of COVID-19. (Note that this will also be true for jurisdictions that require symptoms for testing. I believe that SK tested many asymptomatic people, but the US for example is not.)

Note that the 1%CFR estimates are based on full access to medical resources. When medical systems are overwhelmed as in Italy, we expect that number to increase from that baseline. Jurisdictions that report a markedly lower fatality rate are likely to have had systematic problems in identifying or reporting on case totals.

[bigpumpkin]

Guangdong China: 320,000 tests by Feb 28,

2820 positive cases.

Positive rate: 0.8%

Iceland: 3,787 tests by March 18,

330 positive cases.

Positive rate: 8.7%

Clearly Guangdong did more testing with respect to its epidemic than Iceland.

Let's look at New York State:

172,360 tests by March 29,

59513 positive cases

Positive rate: 34.5%

[jariel]

Iceland as of March 30 has done 16K tests. Which is 45K/million people (4.5% of their entire pop), they have 6.6% infection rate. [1]

Hubei population is 60M. So they'd have to do 2.7 Million tests to have the same degree of testing at Iceland.

Even with an excessive lockdown, it seems that just on this issue alone, China's numbers look really quite wrong.

That there was a breakout in other parts of the country and almost no deaths look very suspicious.

Combined with the fact that all public Chinese information is part of an 'orchestration of public opinion' (i.e. propaganda effort) and is not based in any reality, so of course, there's a credibility problem to begin with.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing

[bigpumpkin]

"Even with an excessive lockdown, it seems that just on this issue alone, China's numbers look really quite wrong."

So you are saying that countries and regions that are under-testing relative to Iceland all have numbers that are wrong?

"That there was a breakout in other parts of the country and almost no deaths look very suspicious."

That is what you don't get, there was never an outbreak in the rest of the country outside of Hubei. The number of cases never exceeded 3,000 in any other province.

[jariel]

"are saying that countries and regions that are under-testing relative to Iceland all have numbers that are wrong?"

No, I'm saying that Iceland's numbers are strong, that they compare remotely well with most other nations (ie more testing, lower rate of infection), all of which, when taking together, make China's numbers look fabricated.

"That is what you don't get, there was never an outbreak in the rest of the country outside of Hubei."

3000 is an enormous number of cases, tantamount to a 'major outbreak'.