
Stacks of Urns in Wuhan Prompt New Questions of Virus’s Toll - smacktoward
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/stacks-of-urns-in-wuhan-prompt-new-questions-of-virus-s-toll
======
aaron695
A lot of the modelling was and still is based around Wuhan. If China has lied
it has cost us lives.

It's important to know what happened, using funeral homes for data is not
uncommon. It's how the 2003 European heat wave was uncovered.

~~~
xbmcuser
Ah no from what I have read the information and warnings were given by the
intelligence community but were ignored. A country ruthlessly quarantined a
city of 20 million. At the same time it stopped movement of people inside the
whole country. Western countries ignored it Asian countries did not and were
faster to put restrictions. Now politicians in the west are trying to use
China to deflect from the fact that they were caught with their pants down.

------
FailMore
I was accidentally following coronavirus from its absolute infancy because of
some strange subreddits I follow (r/n_n_n). I became f r e a k e d out about
this thing and how it destroyed the way of life in Wuhan.

I tried to warn my friends and family to prepare and take this seriously by
writing:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TOQezig4-wV6Hhl5e5Ub_D01...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TOQezig4-wV6Hhl5e5Ub_D01w5MXQHgt9gllph-
DwKI/edit?usp=sharing)

In it I had a section on why I thought the numbers emerging from Wuhan were
not accurate, which read:

...

On top of this have been the extremely grim videos coming out of China showing
bodies piling up. It is not easy for people to get damaging information about
China out beyond its ‘Firewall’, so it is my personal view that these videos
are the tip of the iceberg.

You will not enjoy clicking on these links, but you can if you want to see
some of the reality where there has been outbreaks:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/ezjpcc/more_video_of...](https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/ezjpcc/more_video_of_bodies_being_tak)
en_from_private/ \- 20 days [this was written on 27th Feb, so 20 days ago
means 7th Feb]

[https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/eyuz5z/lots_of_bodie...](https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/eyuz5z/lots_of_bodies_here_2_kill_perce)
ntage_is_bs/ \- 22 days

[https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/04/whistleblower-arrested-
reveal...](https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/04/whistleblower-arrested-revealing-
many-bodies-wuhan) -12179637/?ito=newsnow-feed - 22 days

[https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/exph1z/two_at_the_sa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/exph1z/two_at_the_same_time_unknow)
n_locationtime/ \- 24 days ago

[https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/ex3k7p/what_exactly_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/ex3k7p/what_exactly_is_going_on_here_)
unknown_location/ \- 25 days

In these videos there are probably a total of 15-25 bodies, and there are a
lot more of these videos doing the rounds. As you can see these videos are
from between 20 and 25 days ago. At that time there were 400 and 900
registered deaths associated with the disease. It is unlikely beyond the
extreme that ~ (20/900) 2.2% of all deaths were being recorded on camera and
making it beyond the great firewall. To me this is a big indicator that the
real figures are much higher.

~~~
demarq
given the fact there were 400 to 900, I wouldn't be surprised at any of those
videos. have I missed something?

~~~
FailMore
That the likelihood of seeing a minimum of 2% of deaths surface on the
internet at once from one of the most secretive regimes out there with a lock
on the internet is low. It implies that there were >>>> 400-900 deaths at the
time and the 'escape rate' of images/videos was lower (which is more in line
with a secretive regime)

------
tim333
You can explain some of the discrepancy without China actually lying. They
always said the official numbers were for people diagnosed of COVID who then
died but it was no secret that the testing services couldn't keep up and many
people died at home without official testing.

~~~
rstuart4133
If China stayed on the curve the USA is currently on, they would now need
about 1.5M urns. The article mentions stacks of 3,500.

To put 3,500 into perspective, article says there are 56,000 cremations per
year in Wuhan alone. That's 4,700 a month. Every normal year 9M people die in
China.

------
demarq
I'm I the only one who notices a strong pattern of "China is failing, based on
this sketchy evidence we got" type articles in American media.

I say this as someone who is neither Chinese or American. But I just notice
the eagerness of western media to portray chinas doom and incompetence.

Don't get me wrong, China's attacks on free speech and persecution of muslims
is a terrible terrible thing, but I get the feeling that they are managing the
outbreak and the economy far more effectively than their western counterparts.

~~~
alisonatwork
I'm not sure western media is eager to portray China's doom, but i do think
they tend to blow stories out of proportion.

On this topic: when a city of 10 million people has been locked down for 2
months, even with no coronavirus at all they'd be backed up with 10000+
bodies, so it's not surprising to see a bunch of urns.

On a more general note, i think western media does tend to run with not
particularly well-sourced China stories. That includes both stories like this
one that could be interpreted negatively, but it also includes reprinting
unvetted party propaganda.

The problem is that the CPC does not allow very many western journalists into
China, and the ones it does allow it doesn't give the same kind of freedom of
movement and freedom to report on things that we have come to expect in the
west. So, as a result, the news that makes it out is often fairly flimsy and
suggestive rather than heavily researched. This is deliberate - it's how the
CPC can keep control of the narrative. As someone who lives here, it's
extremely frustrating, because it's impossible to really know what's going on
anywhere except right outside my front door.

No urns outside my front door, btw.

~~~
acqq
> I'm not sure western media is eager to portray China's doom

Then you definitely don't know how the world functions. There are allocated
funds exactly with this purposes. There are the whole groups of people whose
main agenda and work description is doing exactly that. But it will be often
wrapped in some different wording like "responding to the propaganda" or
something, even if the "response" is actual new propaganda being created and
then published in the most media.

~~~
voodootrucker
Could you elaborate on who some of these groups are?

~~~
acqq
There are many aspects of this, and what can be presently proven is always an
extremely small tip of the iceberg. I've read a lot of different historical
accounts and it is practically a given that all these mechanisms or even
institutions and practices which existed up to recently aren't magically
dismantled in the present moment. For the start, read about the practice of
"embedding" journalists or about:

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-
propaganda-...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-
ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/)

Then consider (if you are old enough) about what the public perception of such
coverage was, at the given point of time. Basically, with enough distance in
time, we can easily read about the huge distortions, and just shrug and say
"yes it was so" but somehow too many people assume that the present moment is
somehow, by some magic, "clean."

My favorite example is the

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier)

"a 2003 briefing document for the British prime minister Tony Blair's Labour
Party government. It was issued to journalists on 3 February 2003 by Alastair
Campbell, Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, and concerned Iraq
and weapons of mass destruction."

An apparent "proof" turned out to be "plagiarised from various unattributed
sources including a 13-year-old thesis produced by a student at California
State University."

If something that obvious (after the fact) was used as a proof for many
nations to go to war, and readily repeated by all the media, what do you
expect from the rest of the coverage? I personally remember the coverage from
that times, it was considered "patriotic" to not even try to point to the
better verified facts.

Being surprised about the fact that the direct agendas are behind most of the
"news" production is just like being surprised that "there are exactly that
much important news in the world per day to fit the front page of the
newspaper."

Regarding "embedding" I remember reading different articles about the
journalists and editors being directly enlisted by some agencies to
"independently" provide "patriotic" coverage, even while operating in the
mainland, not in some foreign war zones. Maybe somebody saved some such link,
I haven't, and Google is not helping me.

The current state is not different, to paraphrase James Mickens, even now
these players could without problem claim "we are not doing this" while at the
same time wearing the t-shirts "we are totally doing this" and... only the
first part will be in the titles.

~~~
alisonatwork
Certainly there are plenty of institutions hoping to influence the media to
report stories in a particular way. However, that fact doesn't address the
suggestion of the original poster, which was that the media as a whole is
deliberately trying to find stories of Chinese doom and gloom. I don't think
that's true.

Putting aside the fact that in countries with a free press it's hard to
ascribe any one outlook to the media as a whole, my feeling is that most media
organizations do honestly hope to inform their readers. But there is lots of
information out there, and there are editorial decisions to be made around
what makes the cut or how deep to dig on a story. There is no objective way to
make those decisions, although presumably the interests of the readers are
considered.

Of course, it's no big secret that editors and reporters are biased, or that
they can be influenced. Fortunately in countries where there is freedom of
speech, people have the freedom to report on that too.

The thing about China specifically is that people in other countries are
hungry for information on China because it is a rising global superpower. So
it makes sense that the media wants to jump on any China story they can get.
Unfortunately, due to the circumstances i mentioned before, good stories on
China are thin on the ground. As a result i think there is probably too much
hearsay and propaganda (from whatever side) seeping into the reporting. I
don't think that's deliberate on the media's behalf, i think it's more just a
result of them being hobbled by a regime that is actively hostile to press
freedom.

~~~
acqq
> I don't think that's deliberate on the media's behalf

And I'm sure it is deliberate. Like I've said, not only the editors
deliberately select the news, what will be covered and how it will be covered,
there are agencies producing the news that the media "just covers" but having
established preferences of how the coverage is supposed to be.

I was also ignorant about the phenomenon until I was directly in the location
being covered. Then I've discovered that it is known that "the news are
correct, except about the stuff I'm being directly involved with."

I'm just reading the front page of one local newspaper of one European country
which spends almost no ink on coronavirus topic (and I know more than one
president or prime minister was also doing the same until only a few days
ago). Even avoiding to mention some facts is an editorial policy. In the cases
of misinformation about China, repeating unproven information or even giving
it any attention at all, and especially using that for titles is as a
deliberate act as any other is.

There's nothing "accidental" there.

