#17,169
China has long treated politically sensitive news as a national security problem, and uses its well-honed state controlled media to either bury, `sanitize', or strategically dole out problematic information.
Using these tools the CCP successfully hid the original SARS outbreak in 2002 for several months (see The China Syndrome). Since then they have dealt with their avian flu `problem' (see The Winter Of Our Disbelief), their massive ASF epizootic - and most recently COVID - in much the same way.
Over the past 3 years China - with a population of 1.4 billion - has admitted to just under 370,000 `COVID cases', and 5,235 deaths, both incredibly low numbers for such a large population. By contrast Hong Kong, with a population of just over 7 million, has far exceeded these numbers (2.28 million cases & 11,021 deaths).
Much of this can be chalked up to their long-standing Zero-COVID policies, as China does appear to have dramatically suppressed the spread of the virus - albeit at great cost - on the Mainland.
But a good deal of it is due to creative accounting. China has also reported about 1.5 million `asymptomatic' COVID cases, which they don't include in their official case count. While it isn't clear what they regard as `asymptomatic', it probably includes those with `mild' illness.
Likewise, China's definition of a `COVID death' is equally murky, and likely excludes anyone with any pre-existing condition which might otherwise be blamed.
Seven days ago - following massive protests - China began to `soften their approach' to controlling COVID (see China: NHC Announces Modified COVID Testing & Mitigation Rules), and literally overnight the number of daily cases (including asymptomatic) reported by China's NHC plummeted from > 40,000 to less than 10,000.
Despite anecdotal reporting which strongly suggests that COVID is surging across the Mainland, in less than a week, China's officials numbers have dropped by 75%.
But that was just the start. Today China's NHC announced they would no longer report `asymptomatic' cases, dropping their daily case count to nearly 1/20th of what it was just 10 days ago.
Excerpts from today's (translated) report follow:
Release time: 2022-12-14
can hurt us.
From 00:00 to 24:00 on December 13, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 2,291 new confirmed cases. Among them, 42 were imported cases (8 in Fujian, 8 in Shandong, 6 in Beijing, 5 in Guangdong, 4 in Shanghai, 4 in Shaanxi, 3 in Sichuan, 2 in Inner Mongolia, 1 in Heilongjiang, and 1 in Jiangsu); 2249 cases (1044 cases in Guangdong, 476 cases in Beijing, 179 cases in Chongqing, 112 cases in Hainan, 90 cases in Zhejiang, 73 cases in Sichuan, 70 cases in Fujian, 66 cases in Henan, 20 cases in Liaoning, 20 cases in Shandong, 19 cases in Shaanxi, 16 cases in Shanghai , 16 cases in Yunnan, 13 cases in Inner Mongolia, 12 cases in Jiangsu, 11 cases in Heilongjiang, 4 cases in Guizhou, 2 cases in Hubei, 2 cases in Guangxi, 1 case in Tianjin, 1 case in Hebei, 1 case in Shanxi, and 1 case in Hunan). There were no new deaths. There were 7 new suspected cases, all of which were local cases (6 in Beijing and 1 in Chongqing).(SNIP)
Explanation : At present, the new crown pneumonia nucleic acid test implements the strategy of voluntary inspection. Many asymptomatic patients no longer participate in nucleic acid testing. It is impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infections. From today (December 14, 2022) no Then release the data on asymptomatic infections.
Although the numbers were never reliable, it is hardly surprising that China has seized this opportunity to further reduce their reporting of `bad news' from their surging COVID epidemic. Two days ago, in Flying Blind In The Viral Storm, I wrote:
. . . what happens in China over the next six months could dramatically alter the trajectory of the pandemic, yet reporting from the Mainland remains as sparse and unreliable as ever.
While China has perfected the art of minimizing `bad news', they are far from alone in that regard. Due to reduced testing and reporting around the globe, our ability to see the next threat coming has been substantially degraded over the past few years.
And contrary to the old adage; what we don't know, can hurt us.
