More on China:
https://www.opindia.com/2020/03/china-unsc-un-security-council-block-discussion-draft-coronavirus-covid-19-transparency/
Plus, there is an article in the Economist which once and for all demonstrates that the modellers trying to model the spread of the virus are about as useful as GFS forecasting a screaming easterly on January 20th ten days in advance:
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/01/covid-19-may-be-far-more-prevalent-than-previously-thought
"ONE OF THE trickier tasks for epidemiologists studying the coronavirus pandemic is determining just how prevalent it is. According to Johns Hopkins University, there are now 886,000 confirmed cases of covid-19 around the world, or roughly one case for every 9,000 people. But these numbers reflect not only how many people are known to have contracted the illness, but how many are being tested for it. This varies widely from country to country. Germany is testing 500,000 of its citizens each week. Britain, which is limiting tests to those with severe symptoms, is managing just one-tenth as many.
A new paper by a group of 62 scientists attempts to shed light on the matter using some clever statistics. The study, which was overseen by Neil Ferguson and Samir Bhatt of Imperial College London, looked at data for 11 countries in western Europe. To arrive at accurate estimates for the likely prevalence of the virus in each country, the researchers’ epidemiological model calculates backwards using data on observed covid-19 deaths. By observing the timing of deaths alongside known information about transmission rates and time lags of infections, the researchers arrive at better estimates of covid-19 prevalence.
The results suggest the virus is far more prevalent than official case counts would suggest. Across the 11 European countries studied, official government statistics indicate that there are 319,500 confirmed cases, affecting less than 0.1% of the population. The Imperial researchers peg the more likely figure at 18.5m cases (with a confidence interval of between 7m and 43m), which suggests that, as of March 28th, 5% of the population in these countries have contracted the virus.
This high infection rate is partly because of the highly contagious nature of the virus. The epidemiologists estimated the “basic reproduction number” of covid-19 to be 3.9, meaning that in a population where no one is immune, and no precautions are taken to control the outbreak, each infected individual passes on the virus to nearly four other people. By implementing “non-pharmaceutical interventions”—such as school closures, the banning of public events and nationwide lockdowns—governments have successfully reduced this reproduction number. Once it drops below one, the number of new infections starts to fall.
The researchers estimate that timely interventions over the past month have reduced the reproduction number of the virus across the 11 countries studied by two-thirds to 1.4, thus saving between 21,000 and 120,000 lives. In Italy, alone, interventions have prevented some 38,000 deaths, according to the researchers. The past few weeks have been tough for those hit by the crisis. They can take some solace in knowing that it could have been much worse."
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The Imperial researchers are talking out of their posteriors!
If all that was true. Kindly explain things like South Korea and Taiwan. They cannot have missed 98-99% of all cases (as is the claim here for the western nations) it is simply not possible at all, especially for Taiwan who never had it inside the country in any real sense of the term.
If these nations run at 1.5% death rate (which they have been) then obviously we cannot have 18.5mio cases as that would within 3-6 weeks (of which some have already passed) produce 280,000 deaths (there is a cumulative 34,813 so far) and mean at least 1 million in hospitals as severe cases (more than 2x the total combined tested as infected level) who do need hospital help - it is not optional nor something that can be missed, they will need it or die shortly after due to hypoxia.