The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong's newspaper of record) reports that China excluded 43,000 confirmed-but-asymptomatic cases from its official statistics, and kept the true number classified:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076323/thir...

This would mean that the true number of confirmed cases in China is more than 50% higher than the official number.

Well, if your statement is correct, then this actually lowers their death rate, the CFR (Case Fatality Ratio).

They reported 81,285 cases. So, 81,285 + 43,000 = 124,285 cases.

And 3287 deaths. So, that’s a 2.64% death rate.

At these numbers, and with the virus now worldwide, I think China’s numbers are now irrelevant. It’s better to begin focusing our energies on mitigation and containment.

Estimating CFR is difficult, but it's probably still lower than that

https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1243373051351359488

Not only that - China has refused to participate in an international WHO serology study to see the % of people with antibodies.

...it's not much of a leap to imagine that the reason is to hide the true number that were infected.

I doubt China could have kept a lid on things if the virus has been spreading uncontrollably. Further, the majority of documented cases from the peak have recovered. Which means the associated undocumented cases from then also recovered.

So, while they might have had more total cases, we likely have far more active cases.

Or to imagine the draconian measures that limited the cases. I imagine there was a little of both.

I watched a few videos from China and they seemed to be taking it very seriously, nothing like how the US is handling it.

At a certain point it's not about hiding cases, it's about hiding thousands of deaths and overwhelmed hospitals, complete with temporary tent facilities we could see easily by satellite.

Edit: Feel free to downvote this, but please offer an explanation as to precisely how China could be hiding an outbreak of any significant scale.

By just marking them down as general pneumonia like Russia probably is doing? This shit is NOT killing people at near the rate everyone is constantly panicking about.

And if anyone was going to decide not to try to ventilate every single case, it would be China, who already released a report that in 81% of cases, they die anyway.

Healthcare facilities have the capacity to match the normal needs of a community/region. They don't tend to have a ton of capacity beyond that. This is the entire problem with coronavirus. It is new diseases that requires significant additional healthcare resources beyond what currently exists in any healthcare system.

The rate you're referring to must be (number of deaths)/(number of cases).

That rate is low, but the denominator grows at astronomical speed; evidence of the high numerator is going to show up eventually.

It's not just China hiding deaths. There are many more deaths in the US than reported officially. Simply no testing before they die and of course none after, then they don't count it.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/coronaviru...

Similar things appear to be happening in Italy: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-...

Ultimately, comparing year-over-year deaths may be a more accurate estimate than deaths of tested people.