Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths

[OhioChick]

Tencent briefly lists 154,023 infections and 24,589 deaths from Wuhan coronavirus

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As many experts question the veracity of China's statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures.

On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), Tencent, on its webpage titled "Epidemic Situation Tracker," showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.

The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.

Moments later, Tencent updated the numbers to reflect the government's "official" numbers that day. Netizens noticed that Tencent has on at least three occasions posted extremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approved statistics.

More: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871594

Also reported here, as well as other sites:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/tencent-lists-25k-deaths-1-54-lakh-infections-from-coronavirus/articleshow/73978033.cms

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/image-deleted-from-tencent-sparks-doubt-about-official-virus-tally/news-story/54736a213dddd2e6d8d9d0b382ca34b6


Truth or BS?

[emmaverybo]

1. If it's truth, it is bad news.

[lapfog_1]

2. If true

that puts the fatality rate at 16%, not the official fatality rate of 2% or possibly 2.5%

This is much closer to Ebola and not the flu.

I would be skeptical of this because cases outside of China have not, so far, been seen to be anywhere near that fatality rate. To be fair, it is possible that the people escaping Wuhan to the rest of the world ( the source for the infections for the most part ) are more likely to be younger and not at-risk.

[Mike 03]

3. Interesting, because the original Lancet article put the fatality rate at around 15% nt

[Hortensis]

4. Skeptical here also. What would be the level of care for this mortality rate?

Those with serious symptoms require hospitalization to bring them through, and more and more may not be getting it.

Someone, I wish I remembered who, has relatives near I believe Wuhan. My recollection of details is faulty, but I believe he described high rises to hold 30,000 people just thrown up in their rural town. Fast roadway or other transportation for commute to jobs in Wuhan was provided, but there was NO professional medical care out there before and the development did not include any. NO clinics, no hospitals.

Then we were invited to imagine this kind of situation in many places in China.

Btw, one CDC report was that mortality was 11-15% in hospitalized patients who had pneumonia, but since the comparison is only with hospitalized patients, and of course the statistic is only for the subset of those put severely at risk by pneumonia, that suggests the death rate for all cases would be far lower.

[Recursion]

7. OTOH we know their hospitals are at capacity

And this order of magnitude seems much more consistent with that than the official numbers.

[mercuryblues]

11. If this is true, this is worse than the Ebola outbreak,

The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak infected 28,616 people, with 11,310 deaths according to the WHO. This Ebola outbreak was over a 2 year time span. The cornovirus outbreak was 1st reported on Dec 31,2019, in China. Less than 2 moths ago. Either set of numbers show a high infection rate.

https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/en/

[lapfog_1]

5. so here is some data anomalies.

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

John Hopkins CSEE source

so if you mouse around on provinces next to Wuhan but NOT Wuhan... add up the confirmed cases and deaths... you get 6,291 cases as of today... but only 7 fatalities.

that is a mortality rate of .1% not 2%.

This is a little strange.

[lostnfound]

8. Easily explained by age of cases

Wuhan cases include all of the oldest ones.
Outside of Hubei, cases are newer. Rapid growth rate skews statistics.

[lapfog_1]

12. I don't think that is the whole story

Those cases have been there for a couple of weeks (some of them)

but we can wait a week or so and see if they report more fatalities

[Recursion]

6. That's the only scale of infection that makes the new hospitals make sense

Oy

[spinbaby]

9. The Chinese response alone makes me suspicious

They’re all but shutting down the country in response to the virus, which alone makes me think it’s much worse than the official story.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Does it seem likely someone would be giving Tencent the different set of figures?

If you were a government official with a secret set of figures, why would you let them anywhere near a commercial concern, especially the guy who updates the web pages?

If there were some intercepted email or something, this might have some credibility. But what some IT guy in an internet company updates their webpage to is unlikely to be a closely-guarded state secret.