
Evidence of synthetic data in Wuhan coronavirus body count - baybal2
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ez13dv/comment/fgkkh59
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tim333
I believe the Chinese numbers are supposed to be for people tested and found
to have the coronavirus and for the people out of those who died. This means
they are limited by the number of tests carried out which may explain why the
numbers go up in a fairly smooth way. An exponential boom in actual infections
would just mean most of those would be untested.

So rather than synthetic data maybe actual data but limited testing.

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SpicyLemonZest
The reported count for yesterday is already 3000 off the trendline. I suspect
it’s easy to draw a quadratic through 15 data points for any uncontained
infection, since the first and second derivatives are sure to be positive.

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anotheryou
also death counts?

prediction: 808

reported: 811

\--

sources:

EN: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-outbreak-has-
killed...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-outbreak-has-killed-more-
people-than-sars-11581226253)

probably the original:
[http://www.nhc.gov.cn/yjb/s7860/202002/4f28ab5ca87d42d284833...](http://www.nhc.gov.cn/yjb/s7860/202002/4f28ab5ca87d42d284833df3ccc8d45a.shtml)

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SpicyLemonZest
This is data for 2/8, where the redditor’s death count prediction was 721.

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ryanwaggoner
I think their prediction is for report date. Between reporting lag and time
zone differences, I wouldn’t discount this if it’s tracking the trend lines
but just off by a day.

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anotheryou
damn, I was really worried about the hockey stick on the infection rate and it
became more linear, but now I guess I can't trust any numbers...

