[whimsicalism]

So the argument is that the lockdown secretly failed, but we somehow missed in all antibody tests from travelers in China the widespread covid infection and we also missed all the 3 million deaths?

Data from China is how we even got the sequence for the virus in the first place.

[seanmcdirmid]

Chinese local authorities will lose their jobs if they report any COVID deaths to the central government, so they don't report any (and why the central government was slow to be notified of the first Wuhan COVID cases in the first place). It isn't very complicated, that's how an authoritarian government works. They might actually be doing a good job, but the net effect to those of us on the outside is the same as if they were doing a bad job.

[QuikAccount]

You are taking an extreme "trust everything or trust nothing" position that I didn't make. I'm saying China has in the past spread misinformation about covid even denying that it even existed when in the first place. People should be skeptical about data from China regarding the situation. I'm not saying disregard it just give it extra consideration before accepting it as gospel.

[whimsicalism]

I am not accepting it as gospel, just saying that it is exceedingly likely that china did avert 3 million deaths. The only counter suggestion is that they somehow managed to cover up these 3 million deaths and the associated covid spread.