I don't for a minute believe this number is actually true. But on the other hand, it seems like a very strange lie to tell, because it's so unbelievable. It would be far easier to believe a claim that COVID deaths are simply very rare but not actually non-existent. That would be the sensible lie, the canny lie.
It's tempting to believe that the Chinese government just doesn't give a damn what people think, and are therefore willing to say anything at all. But if they really don't care, why lie in the first place?
The only interpretation that I can come up with that makes sense is that a) the government of China is reluctant to admit to any fault at all, b) the actual number of deaths is low but not impressively low, and c) the Chinese press (including social media) is very tightly controlled, and d) by b and c the government can get away with saying there are no deaths without looking like idiots.
A lie you want me to believe is an admission of weakness. You're effectively saying you're ashamed of telling me the truth. Claiming zero deaths is a lie you don't want me to believe. You want me to know you're lying. It's half "none of your fucking business", half "what are you going to do about it?"
It doesn't start this way... but it becomes this way once the reality of a dysfunctional chain of reporting begins to send you progressively less less believable reports. Past a certain point... you have no choice, your left with "play it as a power move" and "admit failure". Thats the most likely chain of events.
I don't think it's an actual lie, maybe more incompentence.
Western governments don't try to lie about it (I hope) and they still underestimate the real numbers by ~50%. China shockingly doesn't publish (perhaps they don't even have that data) excess deaths for the whole country and they never did.
So it's impossible to try and figure it out from there. They are doing some serious mental gymnastics (
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/01/china/china-birthrate-202...
) about changes in birth rate to explain change in total population though. So, perhaps there are more excess deaths there as well
Considering that URSS named whole space missions only when they succeded, and they failed quite often, it's quite believable that China could lie on this number, a task that requires only to "hide" people and Chinese Communist Party is quite good at that.
I think it's the Russian tactic of trying to coarsen debate with the aim of people not knowing what to believe so they tune out of politics ("all politicians lie").
Somehow this hasn't really sunk in in the West, but China basically ended its pandemic by April 2020.
There has been no sustained local transmission within China since then. There are small clusters of cases that occur when the virus somehow breaches the border protections (e.g., 3-week quarantine for all incoming passengers). There's a very quick reaction whenever this happens, and the outbreak is ended within days to weeks.
The Xi'an outbreak, with 2,000 cases in total, is the most serious outbreak China has had since April 2020. There are small cities in the US with more cases than that every day. Exponential growth is brutal, so China can remain at ultra-low numbers, as long as it detects and contains outbreaks early.
That's why there have been only a handful of deaths (contrary to the title of this thread, there have been a few reported deaths) since April 2020.
There are plenty of people here on Hacker News who either live in China or have friends/family there. It just seems to be the people who don't have any contact with the country who have a hard time believing what's going on in China. I sort of understand: China's pandemic experience has been so different from that of the West that it can be difficult to accept as reality.
the way Chinese government works is that thousands of local municipal level governments implements and then reports into the central government (politburo).
this basically becomes a huge prisoner's dilemma, no body in charge wants to look bad.
Let's say I get a math text book published in China. In the first page it prints 1+1=2.
I don't for a minute believe this equation is actually true. But on the other hand, it seems like a very strange lie to tell, because it's so unbelievable. There are too many digits to select, why do they choose 2? It would be far easier to believe a claim that 1+1=11.
It's tempting to believe that the Chinese government just doesn't give a damn what people think, and are therefore willing to say anything at all.
The only interpretation that I can come up with that makes sense is that they just choosed the mose closed digit after 1 without looking like idiots.
Guess what? If you find a state which is too unbelievalbe to be a lie, it has a very big chance that it is not a lie, unless you really get a evidence to against it.
I am sorry be emotinal if you are really seriously to anaylis. However just because you are probably seriouse, I really want to points out you are in the wrong way. When you are driving in highway and find a sign sys 'WRONG WAY GO BACK'. You should go back, but not turn left, breaking roadbed and drive to the wild field.
Around Feb 2020 at the peak of then Wuhan, there was an accidental reporting on one of the news channel there showing 200K death. Even subsequent body bags order urgently from Taiwan seems to account for that huge numbers. And many reported for days the sky has strong ash smell, with all crematorium working non-stop for months. It is possible the numbers are in millions as there is also reported telco subscribers lost a lot of subscribers there in the range of millions. Considering health care in China sucks if you're in rural and about 40% still in rural, plus babies died because refused admission to hospitals for hours, many believes death number are way higher than those in USA and EU. Even today, China own education system don't mention much death of "great leap forward" which actually put Mao way ahead of Hitler in death counts.
From what I can surmise, local government has a "zero case" mandate from Beijing where they're supposed to do anything possible to prevent COVID cases, and out of fear of the retribution from the party or the desire to be seen favorably, they find a way to report zero cases.
Since they announce a handful of cases every day, they might as well also announce the small share of those that end with the patient dying. The last time that happened (on January 25, 2021, so the headline of the submission here is incorrect) it was just one of many statistics in the report the next day: http://www.jl.gov.cn/szfzt/jlzxd/yqtb/202101/t20210126_79254...
I'm sad to be unable to properly cite this memory of a radio documentary but they were talking about the HIV epidemic as significant numbers of people around the world started dying in 1980s.
China was quick to boast that they had no cases. None. The WHO liaisons pointed out how unlikely this was, and that they should immediately start testing their gay population. China said they only had two gay men, and neither tested positive.
Don't believe China. They are —for any way that matters— above laws and decency. They only say things to make China look good.
It's of course worth noting that China is one of the countries that stopped reporting excess deaths themselves since it would be pretty obvious that if China e.g. reported a million excess deaths then the majority could likely be attributed to SARS2 (whether they die directly from the virus or starve as a result of their brutal lockdowns).
Economist using excess deaths figures from countries that failed contain covid to make upper bound inferences for PRC, which contained covid.
Also range starts from MINUS 150K, i.e. excess life. Which makes more sense considering the source Economist used to extrapolate excess deaths for PRC concluded excess deaths was lower outside of Hubei/Wuhan in the months post lockdown [0] and things have been basically normal since due to aggressive covid zero policies. Other countries that aggressively contained covid also has excess life stats.
China’s zero COVID efforts and policy seem to be real, not made up.
However given there have been a number of small outbreaks they have either been very lucky it has never spread to a vulnerable person or they have covered up several deaths over the last year.
Western journalists and businessmen are on the ground throughout the country (not to mention family ties and communications between expat Chinese and their families) and if there were a major outbreak of COVID killing dozens or hundreds, i dont think they’d be able to cover it up.
To give you an opinion from someone on the ground in Hong Kong, the zero case policy is very real, and it's strangling the city. Many people are unhappy with it. With an at minimum two week quarantine when you come back to Hong Kong, it's nearly impossible to leave. I myself have three weeks of quarantine coming up soon.
The result of these harsh restrictions is that there haven't been major outbreaks, I think the worst we ever got was about 120 infections daily, and only 213 deaths overall, with the last one being on September 14th.
The downside of this, is that the vaccination rate in HK is very low, because there's no difference between being vaccinated or not. You're subject to the same local restrictions, and subject to the same length of quarantine when you come back.
Vaccination rate spiked up recently, because a new "wave" has started. Newly discovered cases spiked to 38, and the government announced a new two week lock down to squash it. Ironically, part of the new cluster revolves around a party thrown by some government officials and legislative counsel members.
Note: I'm personally very unhappy with the situation in Hong Kong, but try to refer from giving my personal opinion, so it's mostly just fact based.
To add to this, I don't really trust the numbers coming out of China. But China takes the zero case policy far more serious, with more extreme lockdowns, and city wide testing. They don't even want to open the border with Hong Kong, out of fear that the virus might come in that way.
There are still outbreaks that receive reporting, e.g. [1]. It's just not as big part of Western news feeds, (a) because there's so much going on and (b) because the limited data makes it hard to fit into reader-relevant coverage.
As far as the number itself goes: this article [2] is pretty polemic, but it does a good job of putting the number in the context of comparables from other countries. One thing discussed is that almost every country is underreporting COVID deaths due to systematic pressures, so journalists are in a bind about how to report.
While China is an extreme example, any site that wants to show you a table of data across time and regions would require infinite footnotes to describe ways the data might be right or wrong. Worldometer has a page that describes its methods [3], which basically says their policy is to aggregated data from official sources. I think that's reasonable, although I think they could use a bigger "this may be garbage in garbage out" banner so folks don't interpret carelessly.
They covered up reeducation camps for a long time. A strong authoritarian government is much more capable at blatant corruption and conspiracy than western nations are used to.
We’ve been hearing about the genocide and reeducation camps in Xinjiang for many years. How long did they actually cover it up for? I believe they actually post propaganda videos from the reeducation camps themselves.
Zero COVID prevented the virus from becoming endemic in China (look up the definition of endemic). Once it does, you’re right that it seems like putting the genie back in the bottle is impossible - once COVID has spread to wildlife like deer and cats it seems hard to imagine a method of wiping it out within that country’s borders.
We know several other countries with less strict policies than China maintained zero COVID for quite some time, or states within those countries (Australia for instance had COVID outbreaks they successfully confined to one or two states). Once delta hit, it became too difficult for those countries to continue, but we can see China is more authoritarian and their stricter measures may still be effective for now.
Short term zero COVID may be achievable. I am not disputing that. However, China must maintain vigilance literally forever. That is why I don't find it a realistic policy.
China was becoming insular even before COVID. One gets the impression that the Chinese government finds COVID to be a convenient excuse to control the population in ways that would have been unthinkable before.
I give it another month. Hosting the Winter Olympics is guaranteed to bring in some Omicron where at which point it'll all be over, regardless of the precautions they have in place.
No need to have volunteers. Seems like it would make more sense to have paid staff for everything, and pay them for a 2 week quarantine before going back to normal society. It can be done.
I think at this point, every single thing the Chinese government claims, whether it’s about Covid or invading the independent nation of Taiwan, it should be taken with deep suspicion.
It is ridiculous to criticize the "zero case" stratergy on one hand and doubt the "zero death" report without any evidence on the other hand. It is just like a craying baby to refuse the reality.
To @johan_larson, you don't have to bother to give out a bullet list about your analyses. You should had learned in high school that any case study and analyses should base on data and facts. However all points you listed are based on your subjective judgment. That will be earier to just say NO I DO NOT BELIEVE IT. Just like others comments.
BTW, as a chinese living in oversea, I thanks for the chinese government to be serious about "zero case", even that brings me difficulty going back to China. As long as I know my parents are living in the one of a few country which are safe for aged people so far.
If you are young or if you are in the middle age, you don't have to care about COVID very much. You can take care about yourself. You probably die if you get it but only in a less chance. However if you have parents and/or grand parents, go to read some article about symptoms or listen to the experience of people who recovered from COVID. Imagine how suffer they were and how they fear in the mid-night when they in the bed alone. (Because the illness could take a turn for the worse very quickly, and it turns to be very dangerous if no proper treat in time.)
If it is possible by the sake of your empathy, think about how many the "zero case" stratergy saved aged people in China and praise it abit!
If you refuse to admit the above. Just don't bother to doubt unless you do get any evidence. By the sake of humanelity empathy, do your best to stop spread around you. Reduce the risk to aged people in your familty and others beloved!
Total B.S. To those stating China’s strict lockdown policy somehow makes this believable- lockdowns are in response to COVID. If there are still COVID cases triggering lockdowns, there is still COVID out there causing death.
Not if lockdowns are rapid enough, no. If cases are caught immediately, and whole populations are tested, there can only be a few dozen cases, and from there we expect few to no deaths.
It is not possible to 'catch immediately'. People spread it, government notices, lock-downs go into effect. A few dozen cases in a country of 1.4B is laughable.
Every single person in China who seeks medical care and who has fever or respiratory symptoms is tested.
Every person who works in a high-risk job (e.g., airport staff, border staff, some types of medical personnel) is regularly tested.
Purchases of over-the-counter fever-reducing drugs are monitored.
That's how outbreaks are caught early. If you're interested, and if you read Chinese, you can actually learn in great detail how (almost) each outbreak over the last year-plus was detected. There are detailed contact-tracing reports on most of the outbreaks.
The CN government doesn't immediately know when any one of their 1.4B citizens has COVID. Even if they did, early detection decreases death rate, it is not a cure. And zero deaths signals cure.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that most cases are caught immediately.
Zero deaths really doesn't signal a cure. Low infections -> less chance of deaths. If you only have 200-300 cases a year, then there's a good chance you'd have no deaths.
So no, zero deaths doesn't mean cure, it can just as well mean very low transmission.
Why wouldn't they? Groups more important than worldodometer pledged to China shenanigans. I would do exactly the same: publish the official data and let the user deduce that it's total bullshit. That damages the China image ever more. The past year we were on the brink of buying some lab equipment from a chinese seller, but the numbers were so suspiciously good and their guarantees so thin (in case of underperforming) that we end up buying from a local seller at twice the price.
They lie by default and it damages in the long run.
> why a site like worldometer would post this as facts.
I love worldometers. What would you expect them to do? They aggregate official stats. I don’t expect them to use a statistical model or something, I want the real reported numbers. The only thing they could really do in my opinion is put an asterisk on the numbers that are wildly unbelievable with a small disclaimer or something. I don’t check the Chinese stats there so maybe they have done this already?
Other than that, what would you expect them to do? They can’t have country specific heuristics and different methodologies even if we “know” the count is wrong.
Well, Worldometer just shows the official data. They can hide the fact that North Korea has no data at all but China is way to big to do it. If the official data is a plain lie there's nothing they can do.
If they put a banner warning about it they could end up blocked by the Chinese Firewall, and with a massive DDOS attack against them from a random offended Chinese service.
If your job and very possibility freedom depended on a "zero" in a row inside some spreadsheet you'd make goddam sure there's going to be a zero in there
Would you go as far as quarantining entire blocks of 500 apartments based on one positive covid test, and not letting people out even to buy food?
What the Chinese are doing there isn't nice. Both of my children attend sports practice this afternoon, and they really need do to that. Shutting up entire families for weeks without even five minutes of fresh air is worse than merely "not nice", it's damned harsh. But I can imagine that it'll stop transmission.
What you describe in terms of being forced to stay without food would definitely suck. The fact that you follow this up with "my children absolutely need sports" puts a frankly fairly tone-deaf slant on the rest of it.
Yes, you are right that what you describe China doing is not nice. No, you are not right that not letting children go to sports practice as a measure to keep people from literally dying is "damned harsh". It's a measure that you can get used to - and I would say not letting others (including perhaps these children) get used to it by being so against it vocally is not helping anyone.
Instead we should look for constructive ways to vent our excess energy, which everyone has and children especially do need to do, that don't involve antisocial reasoning.
I suppose my previous message was easily misunderstood.
I'm not trying to say that China's extremely quick escalation and general hashshness is bad overall, or that good. I could argue both sides of that question, and I don't envy the politicians who have to make the choice for each country.
China's is a harsh response, but for a neurotropic and highly infections virus maybe the choice is between an immediate harsh response and another bad outcome dictated by the virus. And maybe the other outcome is worse. I wouldn't know. (I think noone knows — several other neurotropic viruses have a knack of putting people in wheelchairs twenty year later, is this one like them?)
Given how the CCP operates this is a lie. If it is true then China is withholding treatments or vaccines that would have saved millions of lives. Either way the CCP has killed millions of people around the world with the release of this virus from their lab.
Echoing some of the other comments in this thread: Given how they are dealing with outbreaks, having zero Covid deaths is probable. But I don’t blame anyone finding it unbelievable; how extreme they take the term “lockdown” to is unbelievable to begin with.
Also, the aggressive lockdown strategies are also actively causing people to be much more susceptive to other fatalities. So while no people die of Covid, many, many are suffering or even dying as a consequence, without a trace in any Covid reports.
It's (I believe) a reference to an old Communist joke.
A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.”
I can't imagine that anybody here is taking it seriously.
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Please don't use HN for nationalistic battle. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We've already had to ask you this several times, and you've continued to do it quite badly, e.g.:
After so many "conspiracy theories" that later became true, I now tend to put more weight on the idea that this is a bio-weapon or lab leak and China knew the solution or actively even tried spreading it throughout the world. For example to influence the outcome of 2020 election.
Because the powers at be in the US loved trump? Don't look at China, think about a US leak. China's government structure is built to micromanage viral outbreaks in a successful manner.
It's tempting to believe that the Chinese government just doesn't give a damn what people think, and are therefore willing to say anything at all. But if they really don't care, why lie in the first place?
The only interpretation that I can come up with that makes sense is that a) the government of China is reluctant to admit to any fault at all, b) the actual number of deaths is low but not impressively low, and c) the Chinese press (including social media) is very tightly controlled, and d) by b and c the government can get away with saying there are no deaths without looking like idiots.