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China Medicine News

China Raises Coronavirus Death Toll by 50% in Wuhan (nytimes.com) 258

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
China on Friday raised its coronavirus death toll by 50 percent in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak first emerged, amid accusations that the government had concealed the extent of the epidemic. From a report: Officials placed the new tally at 3,869 deaths from the coronavirus in the central Chinese city, an increase of 1,290 from the previous figure. The number of cumulative confirmed infections in the city was also revised upward to 50,333, an increase of 325. The move appeared to be a response to growing questions about the accuracy of China's official numbers and calls to hold the country responsible for a global health crisis that has killed more than 142,000 people and caused a worldwide economic slowdown. China has been criticized as having initially mismanaged and concealed the extent of the epidemic, though it ultimately swung into action and seemingly tamed the virus. Recently, as other countries have grappled with their own outbreaks, Chinese officials have come under even greater pressure to explain how exactly the epidemic unfolded in Wuhan.
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China Raises Coronavirus Death Toll by 50% in Wuhan More

China Raises Coronavirus Death Toll by 50% in Wuhan

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  • That all (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Admiral Krunch ( 6177530 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @09:06AM (#59958044)
    That's a tiny amount. Only about 2 days worth of New York deaths.
    They will have to do much better if they expect anyone to believe it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by chispito ( 1870390 )

      That's a tiny amount. Only about 2 days worth of New York deaths. They will have to do much better if they expect anyone to believe it.

      What could possibly lead you to believe that is all?

      • That's a tiny amount. Only about 2 days worth of New York deaths. They will have to do much better if they expect anyone to believe it.

        What could possibly lead you to believe that is all?

        What could possibly lead you to believe that I did?

        • Re:That all (Score:5, Funny)

          by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @09:25AM (#59958086)

          That's a tiny amount. Only about 2 days worth of New York deaths. They will have to do much better if they expect anyone to believe it.

          What could possibly lead you to believe that is all?

          What could possibly lead you to believe that I did?

          Not reading your whole comment. My bad.

        • That's a tiny amount. Only about 2 days worth of New York deaths.

          They will have to do much better if they expect anyone to believe it.

          What could possibly lead you to believe that is all?

          What could possibly lead you to believe that I did?

          What could possibly lead you to believe that people read the comments, let alone articles?

    • Re:That all (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @10:13AM (#59958256)

      The number is credible and the adjustment reflects the fact that they have it under control there and can now start counting deaths they missed. The fact they are off quarantine shows they have it under control.

      You guys have got to stop with this anti-china nationalism stuff- it's going to lead to war.

      https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

      But let's set that aside.

      Even if China didn't have it under control, every country on earth except Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan failed miserably to horrifically.
      When China put their population under hard quarantine and started building hospitals, the rest of world had a warning. I saw it- I went and bought 6 months food, a new freezer, PPE, etc. by Feb 10th. And I'm "just a guy". I do have experience with forecasting and understand exponential and logistic growth curves. That helped. So did Dr. John Campbell on Youtube.

      But every country is responsible for their own infections and deaths because they ignored the fact the pandemic was real and put a few more weeks of the economy vs a full blown pandemic.

      *YOU* can't escape responsibility if you were saying "The Flu is worse" or "But we can't shut down businesses with only 500 dead!".

      Don't be whiners. Understand you blew it too.

      When china first was saying this was no big deal, they had 42 cases. As soon as they hit 500 cases, they locked it down. The U.S. would have had to have locked it down at 100 cases to be as responsive. Italy at 20 cases.

      Meanwhile Fox news was wall to wall "no big deal- flu is worse- elderly should take it on the chin and die".

      • I post reverse-trolling stuff too often to get mod points, so here's a virtual +1 insightful to you.

      • Re:That all (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Toonol ( 1057698 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @10:39AM (#59958360)
        The number is credible

        Nowhere close. This spreads quickly and asymptotically. They claim to have completely suppressed it in many provinces after it had already started to spread. Compare that to the disease's behavior everywhere else on Earth. I doubt their infected numbers are even 10% of the truth in China. They're not claiming they've 'slowed the spread' or 'flattened the curve'. They're claiming success in eliminating it out of huge geographical areas, and that's impossible. They won't have success getting rid of this disease until vaccines are available (a year from now), or the prior infection rate hits 60-70%.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          You forget how much of a surveillance society China is. It is entirely plausible that they reliably knew every single person who was within a hundred feet of an infected person. Having that data readily accessible makes a huge difference in stamping out an infection.

          • Ride the line 4 in Shanghai at 4:55 PM on a weekday. You're now within 100 feet of 1000 people. Some cities are so dense and have so much public ridership (10+ million a day in Shanghai (double to triple that of NYC) that you can't really track everyone. And for all the talk about surveillance in China, there are still hundreds of miles of roads and paths in just Shanghai that are unmonitored.

        • Re:That all (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @11:01AM (#59958478)

          Okay.. first -- just like the U.S. the 82,692 cases in china are *confirmed* cases. About 12,000-14,000 of them diagnostically but the rest are all the result of testing. The U.S. number is *low* too. In fact, the argument you are advancing applies to literally *every* country on earth. We won't know about the number of asymptomatic or mild cases until we can accurately test for antibodies.

          Secondly... given a number of stated deaths at 4,500 and using the CFR of 1% advanced by conservatives indicates they had about 450,000 cases. Since about 20% of cases are serious- that would mean 112,000 serious cases. Of those, half survive even in italy and spain so that would mean about 56,000 deaths.

          You give me your preferred CFR and we can run the numbers. But data is data and when it's inconsistent, it's obvious. I see no obvious, "order of magnitude" error in the data as compared to the behavior we can see and verify.

          It's not impossible when you literally tape people in their houses and take them to quarantine centers if the tape is broken twice.

          It *is* impossible with soft quarantine's. That's how I knew it would be so serious in the west. Because I knew in January the west was incapable of that level of quarantine because we are not dictatorships.

          China literally sealed people inside their residences for 8 weeks. Your food was brought to your window by your local committee member or neighborhood representative. Their death rate dropped off a cliff on feb 19th as a result but they stlll had many cases and deaths thru mid march.

        • The number is credible
          Nowhere close. This spreads quickly and asymptotically. They claim to have completely suppressed it in many provinces after it had already started to spread. Compare that to the disease's behavior everywhere else on Earth. I doubt their infected numbers are even 10% of the truth in China. They're not claiming they've 'slowed the spread' or 'flattened the curve'. They're claiming success in eliminating it out of huge geographical areas, and that's impossible. They won't have success getting rid of this disease until vaccines are available (a year from now), or the prior infection rate hits 60-70%.

          The situation is credible, the numbers aren't.
          China didn't have 'quarantine lite' like other places. We know proper quarantine contact tracing and surveillance can work. Or else why is the rest of the world trying to copy China?

          But I don't think you can say any countries numbers are completely accurate. France and UK weren't counting nursing home deaths. American coroners can't get enough tests, New York has thousands of extra deaths and America will now start to count probable deaths. It's impossible for

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Check some videos of China on social media, like this: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCy... [twitter.com]

          If what you claim was true then China would have mass graves so big they would be visible to spy satellites. Smoke from industrial furnaces and temporary mortuaries. There is no way they could hide millions of dead, journalists and random people with phones would be getting the message out. Their firewall isn't that good, we know about most of the shit that goes on in China.

          It's implausible to suggest that their numbers

      • So what you're really saying is that you're ignoring all the evidence pointing to massively higher death tolls in China from Covid-19 than the bunk reported numbers.

      • The fact they are off quarantine shows they have it under control.

        They aren't really off lockdown, they have a relaxed lockdown. A lot of things are still closed, and subway ridership is way down.

      • You guys have got to stop with this anti-china nationalism stuff- it's going to lead to war.

        It is complete utterly unrestrained mass hysteria. There must have been a time when propagandists had to really work hard to get this going but now everyone helps out. It's as if there is no resistance at all against it now. You want us to hate Russia, China, the WHO, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea? Everyone will get behind it right away and hate them with a passion.

        Your numbers for the threshold for action don'

      • The number is credible and the adjustment reflects the fact that they have it under control there and can now start counting deaths they missed.

        You mean by going into the houses one-by-one and counting the skeletons?

      • The number is credible and the adjustment reflects the fact that they have it under control there and can now start counting deaths they missed. The fact they are off quarantine shows they have it under control.

        I'm not doubting that they have it somewhat under control. They are opening places up so they must feel confident they have a handle on it. They can do things other countries can only dream of.
        I don't believe that 'just Wuhan' didn't have proper counting though. Every county you see it in the news that they aren't counting everything, America, Spain, Italy, UK. To think China has given out accurate numbers for all the other cities is absurd. There will have to a lot more 'revisions' before anyone will take

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hnjjz ( 696917 )

        I do have experience with forecasting and understand exponential and logistic growth curves.

        Unfortunately, most people are not like you and find exponential growth unintuitive. For a disease that doubles every 3 days when uncontrolled like covid19, delaying action by 3 days means you'll end up with double the number of cases and deaths, and delaying by 10 days means you'll have ~10x the number of cases and deaths. The total number of cases/deaths will change dramatically with just a slight change in how quickly and decisively a country takes action to control the spread of the disease.

        Did China

      • The number is credible

        The problem is that the source of the number is not credible. Even if it were purely due to incompetence (which I highly doubt) it would show that the Chinese authorities have absolutely no clue what the real death toll is. I see no reason not to suppose that it may increase by another 50% or more in a few more weeks or months time.

  • Key and Peele (Score:4, Funny)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @09:13AM (#59958058) Journal

    ...with Chairman Xi as Charlie Sanders in this skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    at 1:54:

    "Whereas I was not incorrect, I did not perhaps communicate the death toll with the actual numbers I knew to be true."

  • China is lying (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Friday April 17, 2020 @09:16AM (#59958070) Homepage Journal

    With countries like USSR (and now Russia) and China, the presumption must be, that they are lying. While it is always — and everywhere — in the acting governments' interests to make things appear better than they are, some countries do not have the opposition interested in the, ahem, opposite... Thus, the only bottom limit on the published figures is the foreigners' credulity.

    That said, although we should not trust their absolute figures, the relative increase — 50% — just might be true...

    Then again, it might instead just be a reflection of the Chinese reassessment of the credulity. Oh, the gweilos don't believe 2000 deaths? Fine, let's revise it to 3000...

    • Do you think the world sees the US as any different?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Neither was that implied nor is it the topic at hand. Your whataboutism is hereby rejected.

      • Yes.

    • I grew up in Eastern Europe under Communism. Communist governments have a pathological inability to tell the truth. They do it only if it will benefit them more than any possible lie. Which is rare. Treat Communists as presumed guilty until proven innocent, not the way you treat normal people.

      Yeah, whatabout blah-blah. Can you imagine if Trump says "Oops, the actual victims in New York are double. We suddenly learned that a bunch of people died in their homes (which we totally did not lock up and w

  • But the West does the same... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cruachan ( 113813 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @09:24AM (#59958084)

    here in the UK we've only been counting deaths outside hospitals over the past few days when Journalists raised questions, before that it was swept under the carpet. Similarly numerous other western countries, including the USA

    So it's more than a tad hypocritical to make out this is some great Chinese cover-up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DavenH ( 1065780 )
      Right. It appears that the excess deaths around the world are approximately double those attributed to COVID, and the rigid correlation with those excess deaths points to their being dependent.

      If COVID is not directly causing them all, it's forcing other patients out of hospitals and indirectly causing mortality. The excess death count is probably the best metric to use as the numerator in any mortality rate calculations for COVID, since it can't be fudged by categorization tricks.

      https://www.economist.co

      • The excess death count is probably the best metric to use as the numerator in any mortality rate calculations for COVID, since it can't be fudged by categorization tricks.

        Not at all clear: when I go out on the streets the last few weeks, they're empty. The death toll from automobile accidents--38,000 people per year on U.S. roads in a normal year-- is way down. Likewise, work-related accidents are going to be near zero at the moment.

        See if you can get figures for the excess death not counting accidents.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DavenH ( 1065780 )
          Oh, that's a very good point. The implication being the excess deaths attributable to COVID are in fact a lot worse than just double. Yikes.

          I suppose a good statistician would therefore look at the average automotive death statistics for the season and jurisdiction and see how far under normal they currently are, then add that number to the excess deaths count. Don't have that data on hand though.

        • Probably the most high risk (w.r.t. workplace accidents) jobs are considered essential almost universally across the globe. I wouldnt wanna bet on that part of your argument, at all.
    • That depends on the rationale. If deaths were not attributed because officials could not be sure or were behind in officially declaring a cause of death due to work overload, that’s a little more understandable as determining cause of death isn’t always easy. However if the rationale was an effort to underreport deaths for PR purposes that’s another matter. Personally with China, I think it was both reasons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lorinc ( 2470890 )

      here in the UK we've only been counting deaths outside hospitals over the past few days when Journalists raised questions, before that it was swept under the carpet. Similarly numerous other western countries, including the USA

      So it's more than a tad hypocritical to make out this is some great Chinese cover-up.

      China has a strong grip over all its communications. We will probably get a glimpse of the true number in 50+ years.

      In the west, deaths are under-reported for sure. It is very difficult to find the number of death in nursing homes. When France began to publish that number, they found out that it amounts to more than 50% of the death toll. And they even stated it is a low estimate because it is up to the nursing homes to report the cases as covid-19 related as there is no central statistical tool for that. S

      • Re:But the West does the same... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cruachan ( 113813 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @11:35AM (#59958694)

        I really don't see the difference here, the argument that China is being substantially different to the west seems to me a rather odd combination of Special Pleading ('because we wouldn't do that and they would') and Circular Reasoning.

        Do I think the Chinese numbers have uncertainties? Sure. Do I think they are dramatically off and China lied substantially? No. And that's because the epidemiology of the virus in China as reported by them largely matches up with the epidemiology in Korea and Taiwan, neither of which have any great love for China.

        The plain fact is the West has largely screwed their response up and they're now casting around for scapegoats - and China and the WHO are the obvious ones to call. There's a really rather nasty streak of Orientalism coming to the fore here

  • We had 4,600 reported deaths from covid-19 yesterday. That is over one and a half times the people who died on 9/11.

    The reported deaths have been trending up. For the past week we have had over 2,300 deaths each day and now the number has jumped.

    At the current rate, the U.S. will be at 40K deaths by Saturday. And this is just in a little over a month since the first confirmed death.

    For reference, for the entire 2019 flu season, just over 61K died.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      This is the part about the "Flattening the curve" strategy that doesn't seem to have clicked with a depressingly large number of people who ought to know better yet - including those making decisions in the US and elsewhere. The whole strategy involves turning a Matterhorn into a Tabletop Mountain; sure, you might have less overall volume below the curve, and avoid the high-altitude peak that would overwhelm the capacity of the medical services, but you are going to have that flattened peak for 2-3 weeks b
      • In the US at least stay at home has changed in the media from "flattening the curve" to it will stop the virus.
    • So the big news here is that worldwide disease kills more people than a single terrorist attack? Look, I'm not trivializing the seriousness of the deaths or the ongoing danger of COVID-19, but that's the most bizarre comparison of unrelated statistics I have ever seen in several lifetimes. Compare it against influenza deaths per day, sure (yup, COVID-19 is far worse - in fact, for the past week it's been the leading cause of death surpassing heart disease and cancer). But don't just pick some random event w
    • I've been looking at the numbers rise for a while now. I check Google, Wikipedia, CDC, etc., and their numbers can differ. Sometimes, on some of the sites, the numbers actually go down. WTF?

      April 16, 2020 numbers from cdc.gov:
      Total cases: 632,548 (632,220 confirmed; 348 probable)
      Total deaths: 31,071 (26,930 confirmed; 4,141 probable)

      The Atlantic reports that "nearly one in five people who get tested for the coronavirus in the United States is found to have it." 20% who get tested in the US, tes

  • Every government lies. About everything. All the time.

    Some cultures are worse than others about it, tho. Those that are into "Saving Face" are the worst.

    People are the same too. It's not entirely malicious -- one puts their best foot forward, always. To not do so is detrimental to advancement and promotion.

    It's a fine line between putting your best foot forward, and outright manufacturing and massaging data to seem blameless.

    The converse of this is framing data to make the other side look like total to

    • Going so well until you demonstrated your bias.

      • Going so well until you demonstrated your bias.

        Look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face I'm wrong.

        You think CNN, MSNBC, NYT will *ever* be helpful to the Republicans?

        All I see is such anti-Trump seething hatred that I don't read them anymore. And I'm not the only one thinking this way. It's plainly visible, the bias now. It was noticeable in the era of Reagan and Bush and Clinton, but now it is plainly visible that the media is basically a propaganda arm for the Democrats.

        Prove me wrong.

        You demonstrate your own bias, sir.

        Just an example of

        • It's not bias if 90% of what Trump says and does is actually very bad.

          • It's not bias if 90% of what Trump says and does is actually very bad.

            Not everyone thinks like you do, not everyone thinks the way CNN wants you to think, not everyone thinks like the college professors say you should think.

            Things that you consider bad, very bad, I may consider "meh" or actually good. Things I consider good would probably send you into a safe space, cuddling a plushie, shivering in fear.

            Just like me, 20, 30 years ago. I changed. I saw that certain things our country was / is doing would ultimately hurt us -- and where we are, witnessing the harm.

            You people

        • American news are never neutral. They're either pro-republicans or pro-democrats. And people only like to watch things that are pro-their-own-choice and are annoyed that the other side doesn't like their choice.

          It's basically the same bullshit that always happens on forums: Mac vs Windows, iOS vs Android, Playstation vs Xbox.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Every government lies. About everything. All the time.

      I was saying to my coworkers in early March that every single government will be fudging the numbers, some up, some down, for political purposes, both internal and external.

      America seems to be fudging the numbers upwards, while China downwards, for example.

      The one thing I know is that the first countries to "re-open" will have significant global economic advantages, and that the route to getting there is different depending on the country. America is in an almost unique position due to its currency be

      • "Printing money has the least impact?"

        You really think that diluting the U.S. dollar will have no impact on its value?

        • "Printing money has the least impact?"

          You really think that diluting the U.S. dollar will have no impact on its value?

          I don't think the person you replied to knows about the Carter-era inflation, or the crippling blow devaluing the dollar -- which is what printing more does -- had dealt us when kicking the Crown out of America. We couldn't even pay our soldiers or their leaders. The leaders were usually independently wealthy, but not the soldier.

          The last thing I want to see is Print More. Ugh. The inflation that'll create will probably destroy the country. LIke the 70's but far, far worse.

    • And that excuses China's coverup why???

  • Not every CV death is equal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by anvilmark ( 259376 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @09:52AM (#59958176)

    In most truly democratic countries, the medical system is recording every death where the patient tested positive for CV-19 as a CV-19 death - even when the patient was previously suffering from a terminal or life-threatening condition. While technically true- a life was cut short by CV - it converts deaths that would have happened anyway into CV death. This is very different from situation where CV was the only reason the person died.

    China (and other totalitarian countries) is probably doing the opposite - classifying any death that could have a cause other than CV as non-CV. That could substantially reduce reported death rates.

    After this is all over I suspect we well see dips (in democratic countries) and rises (in totalitarian ones) of the mortality rates of common diseases during the pandemic. We'll have to look at the difference from statistical death rates to know the actual impact.

    • In most truly democratic countries, the medical system is recording every death where the patient tested positive for CV-19 as a CV-19 death - even when the patient was previously suffering from a terminal or life-threatening condition. While technically true- a life was cut short by CV - it converts deaths that would have happened anyway into CV death. This is very different from situation where CV was the only reason the person died.

      China (and other totalitarian countries) is probably doing the opposite - classifying any death that could have a cause other than CV as non-CV. That could substantially reduce reported death rates.

      After this is all over I suspect we well see dips (in democratic countries) and rises (in totalitarian ones) of the mortality rates of common diseases during the pandemic. We'll have to look at the difference from statistical death rates to know the actual impact.

      Yep, I don't trust the numbers at all.

      Every incentive in the West is to over count deaths - you don't get bigger budgets and more emergency powers by having less deaths!

    • It weakens your immune system permanently. If they get it and die they're not dying from the cancer, they're dying from the COVID.

    • Re:Wuhan has 30% larger population than NYC (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lonng_Time_Lurker ( 6285236 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @10:12AM (#59958248)

      Even those stats are confusing, as I'm sure you know:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      The New York metropolitan area remains, by a significant margin, the most populous in the United States, as defined by both the Metropolitan Statistical Area (20.3 million residents in 2017)[15] and the Combined Statistical Area (23.7 million residents in 2016)

      I read a bunch about Wuhan and it looks like there are a number of districts incorporated into that number, but I've stopped reading, and will just say population numbers of cities isn't as clear cut as you made it sound.

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