Since we're discussing China's role again, I'll note that CNN just published a special report of leaked documents that suggest, among other things, that China was under-reporting its C19 statistics, though as far as I can tell, not grossly so.
At several critical moments in the early phase of the pandemic, the documents show evidence of clear missteps and point to a pattern of institutional failings.
cnnphilippines.com
The CNN documents shows a health system under stress, while having trouble getting an outbreak of a previously unknown infectious disease under control, just like any other country would have, and for some, still are having. The most incriminating thing out of the report is this: "In a report marked "internal document, please keep confidential," local health authorities in the province of Hubei, where the virus was first detected, list a total of 5,918
newly detected cases on February 10, more than double the official public number
of confirmed cases, breaking down the total into a variety of subcategories. This larger figure was never fully revealed at that time, as China's accounting system seemed, in the tumult of the early weeks of the pandemic, to downplay the severity of the outbreak. "
They then explain that the numerous inconsistencies were because case report numbers at the time were separated into multiple categories: "
On February 10, when China reported 2,478
new confirmed cases nationwide, the documents show Hubei actually circulated a different total of 5,918
newly reported cases. The internal number is divided into subcategories, providing an insight into the full scope of Hubei's diagnosis methodology at the time.
"Confirmed cases" number 2,345, "clinically diagnosed cases" 1,772, and "suspected cases" 1,796.
So China's central health service reported
2,478 confirmed cases for all of China while Hubei province reported
2,345 confirmed cases. No big discrepancy. The difference being cases from outside Hubei province. In early February, China still had problems to sufficiently test for Covid-19 infections. It took time to confirm new cases. The tests were also not yet reliable. The category 'clinical diagnosed cases' was for those who had tested negative with a still faulty test but showed signs of acute pneumonia - i.e. CT chest scans. After the testing problems were resolved the category was eliminated, placing them into the "confirmed" category by mid-February (this correction added a large spike of new cases on 1 day, which again has occurred all around the world there are reporting consistencies/revisions in how positive cases are counted.
Further down, even the CNN journalists admit that the documents they were given do not actually show any wrongdoing.
However, Mertha, the JHU academic, said the mismatch between the higher internal and lower public figures on the February death toll "appeared to be a deception, for unsurprising reasons."
"Conversely, however, the leaked documents also provide something of a defense of China's overall handling of the virus. The reports show that in the early stages of the pandemic, China faced the same problems of accounting, testing, and diagnosis that still haunt many Western democracies even now -- issues compounded by Hubei encountering an entirely new virus."
If they wanted to incriminate China, the documents actually provide very poor evidence.
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