Current Events > China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-concealed-extent-virus-outbreak-151550902.html

(Bloomberg) -- China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths its suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.

The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that Chinas public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that Chinas numbers are fake.

The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.

The outbreak began in Chinas Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of Chinas reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.

Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijings reporting.

Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that Chinas public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.

The medical community made -- interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected, she said at a news conference on Tuesday. Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.

China is not the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.

This data set matters, he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired, he said.

I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information, he said. Were doing that.
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You don't say
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of course they did. but it doesn't mitigate the fact that the US federal government knew months in advance that this would be an issue and ignored it. this is the only reason pompeo is putting this out, he wants american voters to ignore the fact the trump administration buried their heads in the sand and ignored reality.

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No shit.

Who didn't know this?

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Trelve posted...

No shit.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

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Trelve posted...

No shit.

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It takes our intelligence this long to realize this when your average person knew it since January.

Really puts things into perspective...

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shockedpikachu.jpg
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The US is doing the same thing tbh

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China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths its suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.

O RLY?


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monkmith posted...

of course they did. but it doesn't mitigate the fact that the US federal government knew months in advance that this would be an issue and ignored it. this is the only reason pompeo is putting this out, he wants american voters to ignore the fact the trump administration buried their heads in the sand and ignored reality.

So now we beleive our intelligence agencies?

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supercurrymax posted...

So now we beleive our intelligence agencies?

what?
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Well if China can lie then I guess the US can too!
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China's numbers are completely out of line with every other country where you can actually trust their reporting and know that they're testing.

If you look at this:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Their Total Cases/1 M population is 57.

The only countries even comparable to that are either downplaying the whole thing still or just don't have the ability to carry out mass levels of testing.
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Colorahdo posted...

The US is doing the same thing tbh

different methods

china fixes the numbers reported; america limits access to testing

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Gee, you think? A totalitarian government fabricating and obfuscating the truth? You don't say.

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E32005 posted...

what?

We've been told for years by trump and Republicans we cant beleive our Intel agencies. They are deep state Clinton operatives!

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Wuhan alone has more people than any American city and almost as many people as the US' two largest cities combined.

Only having 81.5k cases country-wide given how late they acted and how long it's assumed this has actually been circulating is almost an impossibility.
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All these racists in this topic saying the chinese gov't lied.

smh

mods, do your job.

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supercurrymax posted...

We've been told for years by trump and Republicans we cant beleive our Intel agencies. They are deep state Clinton operatives!

no see that's only when they say things that dont jive with your particular view of reality... obviously someone went through them with a can of raid and scared off the deep state never trumper hillary supporters, but they'll be back next week i'm sure...

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TheMikh posted...

different methods

china fixes the numbers reported; america limits access to testing

I wouldn't phrase it that way. America doesn't have enough tests, and are only just ramping up testing.

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supercurrymax posted...

We've been told for years by trump and Republicans we cant beleive our Intel agencies. They are deep state Clinton operatives!

jesus, he's even thrown the agencies under the bus?

surprised they haven't done something about that
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Shocking.

Positively shocking.

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Bio1590 posted...

China's numbers are completely out of line with every other country where you can actually trust their reporting and know that they're testing.

If you look at this:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Their Total Cases/1 M population is 57.

The only countries even comparable to that are either downplaying the whole thing still or just don't have the ability to carry out mass levels of testing.

Not that I believe anything coming out of their reports, but china was having spikes earlier when they were pretty much the only nation having a serious pandemic, it just slowed down a lot recently that's why the total cases/population is lowered. If you look at some of those developed asian countries, a lot of them do have rates that are on par to that number like japan, south korea, singapore and hong kong. What I'm trying to say is these places got hit first and are now having low and manageable new cases showing, we definitely could do better ourselves and it is the system that's costing us.

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I for one am shocked. shocked I say!

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E32005 posted...

jesus, he's even thrown the agencies under the bus?

surprised they haven't done something about that

well see, here's the thing. they're horribly conniving and super powerful... except they're also horribly weak and super inept! really, it all depends on trumps mood any given week which it is...

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pogo_rabid posted...

All these racists in this topic saying the chinese gov't lied.

smh

mods, do your job.

i remember early on when people were getting modded for saying the chinese government was lying about the numbers.

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Yeah, we don't really need to yap about China right now.

Just say that the USA has the highest number of confirmed cases in the non-China world. And that China cannot be properly confirmed.

It makes the point we need right now.


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Alucard188 posted...

Gee, you think? A totalitarian government fabricating and obfuscating the truth? You don't say.

member when america did this after bombing a hospital of civilians?

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crayola555 posted...

Not that I believe anything coming out of their reports, but china was having spikes earlier when they were pretty much the only nation having a serious pandemic, it just slowed down a lot recently that's why the total cases/population is lowered. If you look at some of those developed asian countries, a lot of them do have rates that are on par to that number like japan, south korea, singapore and hong kong. What I'm trying to say is these places got hit first and are now having low and manageable new cases showing, we definitely could do better ourselves and it is the system that's costing us.

The total cases/1M pop isn't "active" cases it's literally the "total" cases, ever. That number can only ever rise. And how is South Korea "on par" it's nearly 4 times higher and they're testing the fuck out of everyone.

China didn't even publicly report on it until December 31st yet they've gone on to admit to WHO they diagnosed their first case on December 8th (and there's evidence it was already circulating in mid-November). They didn't even start taking actual action until the 3rd week of January and they didn't even report they had confirmed evidence of human-to-human transmission until that time either.
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Squall28 posted...

I wouldn't phrase it that way. America doesn't have enough tests, and are only just ramping up testing.

hopefully availability reaches a point where people don't need to demonstrate blatant symptoms just to get access to those tests

given the rates of asymptomatic carriers, only testing those who are actually noticeably sick is potentially harmful with respect to effectively containing it

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Sephiroth C Ryu posted...

Yeah, we don't really need to yap about China right now.

Just say that the USA has the highest number of confirmed cases in the non-China world. And that China cannot be properly confirmed.

It makes the point we need right now.

While the US' government's lack of preparedness and downplaying in the early days is inexcusable, the Chinese government lying about and covering up what was going on while they were in the middle of it basically fucked the entire world.
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It would have gotten out of China fairly quickly even if they had been transparent. Given what China actually has done, the first real wake-up call to the world should have been China effectively shutting down Wuhan. Which is one of their big industrial/economic areas. And yet China, a country many see as trying to be economically dominant (among other things), shuts down such an area.

Had China been more transparent, we wouldn't have gotten much more time anyway. Some of Europe could have battened down the hatches a week or two sooner, but I'd bet that America wouldn't be much better than it is. Things are too political in America recently to get things done until it actually becomes clear how bad something is.

Hell, even now that it IS clear how bad things are, people are STILL politicizing things like social distancing and measures to reduce disease spread rate.

Even a "transparent good-guy version of China" would probably not really notice the disease being as bad as it was until it had a big outbreak on its hands. Yes, they wouldn't have gone against that scientist, but they wouldn't act on what just one scientist says either and would need to wait for either illness and death reports to start getting worrying, or a decent number of unaffiliated scientists all giving the same warning with more concrete data.

More importantly though, regardless of what happened, we can be angry at China later if we want to be. Right now we have an issue. A virus has gotten around the world, and its pretty nasty. Right now, America is not doing very well with this issue, dragging partisan crap from both sides into what should be a united response. Its getting its testing numbers up, but only in certain areas. Most of the country has very limited testing, often only for people with both the symptoms AND who have been in contact with a potential source group recently. Many areas have a big backlog delay right now too in getting their results back.

Social distancing is not a political thing, guys. And don't even get me started on the mask thing. Sure, yeah, maybe you are best off not using N-95s and higher end medical stuff until we get enough of them to our medical personel (and get half our hospital directors to get their heads out of their asses enough to stop being as dumb as the politicians so that ALL of them can be using any of this stuff they can find right now), but basic masks are a thing people should be taking a note from some asian countries right now. Especially since up to half of people who get Covid may have NO symptoms at all, but can still spread the disease. Might you or that other seemingly healthy guy be one of those? That mask may well be helping to save the people you come into contact with.
.


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Well yea

https://images.app.goo.gl/3guXHUJKJJ8xZb1i6

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monkmith posted...

well see, here's the thing. they're horribly conniving and super powerful... except they're also horribly weak and super inept! really, it all depends on trumps mood any given week which it is...

100% true

he's such a petty child
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Sephiroth C Ryu posted...

More importantly though, regardless of what happened, we can be angry at China later if we want to be. Right now we have an issue. A virus has gotten around the world, and its pretty nasty.

The world should still be mad at China right now because they aren't doing anything about the situation that led to this happening in the first place either. They're pretty much continuing to place the whole world at risk. It's only a matter of time before a third (known) pandemic explodes from there again.
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Fine then, be angry at them. But direct your anger at actually doing things to help NOW. If we want to be angry at China, just bar all travel to and from them, assuming we haven't already (the Jan 31 ban only affects some people and is not a full ban). At least until this mess is over.

Right now, China is unlikely to put us at much more short term risk because everyone already is already wary of their number reporting anyway. Its quite unlikely that any novel new virus will spring up right now and be a threat to the rest of the world, because the rest of the world is already in "we are wary of sending people to/from China right now" mode.

Right now, we are in the situation where it has already gotten out into the world. Right now, we need to deal with this issue. Once we get this issue more under control, we can then yell at China to stop its food market practices (and/or NOT unban the ones it has at least temporarily banned) and to do better and controlling disease spread (not that America is particularly good at that right now).

Right now, we need to focus on getting this pandemic under control. And people are too busy doing things like viewing social distancing as a political stance, being angry at China, and attacking/defending Trump to actually make heard demands to just put aside politics for a bit and do better in our actual response.
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Secret report, CIA would never lie only China would.
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https://i.imgur.com/GFR6dNn.jpg

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