The China Model and the Lie

Introduction

Since the outbreak of the CCP Virus I have seen many smart people create many great analyses of the Corona data both here or Kaggle and on R Bloggers.

To my horror and disappointment some have drawn the conclusion that the “China Model” works. Does it? (wink, wink) Well if you were to rely on the data provided by the Chinese Communist Party it sure does,

I have also seen a lot of people, again most of whom I would consider to be much smarter than I and for all of whom I have great respect suggest that we should apply the “China Model” because it works. The data shows it! ‘It is known’ as the great Dothraki Philosophers would say.

In that case let us have a look and see what the data shows.

Background

For some of you the name Li Wenliang might not mean much and it would not mean much to me if not for the CCP Virus outbreak. He was the doctor who in December 2019 warned his colleagues about a new virus in Wuhan. The reaction of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) was to detain the doctor and force him to sign a statement denouncing his claims about this new virus. For two months after, the CCP proceeded to cover up the good doctor’s claims. And at the same time no measures were taken to stop the outbreak. Sadly, the good doctor died in early February 2020 from the same virus the CCP forced him to deny.

That being said, what the reader should keep in mind is that for two months the CCP and other Chinese authorities (I am assuming that mainland China has other authorities other than the Communist Party) did nothing to stop the spread of the virus. This taking place in a metropolitan area (Wuhan) of over 11 million people.

Now we shall investigate if the ‘China Model’ works and if not then why.

Reported Situation

Before we take a look at the status in China let us take a look at the status of other countries in Asia. For our particular case we should look at Japan, Korea and Taiwan (Yes Taiwan is a country regardless of what the CCP states)

Asia

First, I would like to congratulate Taiwan for their quick and effective reaction. Despite the fact that their first case was detected in mid-January, to date they only have less than 400 cases of the CCP Virus. Apparently, you don’t need the ‘China Model’ to be effective.

Besides this we can notice a similar behavior in the Virus. At first the growth is slow, but it tends to accelerate its spread. Also, we can notice that the number of deaths and recoveries tend to be relatively close unless the number of new cases does not flatten as is the case for Korea.

Europe

In the case of Europe, we can see that out of Germany, Italy and Spain, Germany is fairing the best with the highest recovery rate. Again, we can notice the same behavior as in Asia, exponential spread and a close link between the death and recovery rate. The two diverging as the spread increases.

China

The case for China appears to be very much different. So apparently even though the CCP did nothing but force the good doctor Li to recant his heresy. Despite the two-month long period of inaction, the cases only started to grow exponentially in February, and the recovery curve seems to closely follow the confirmed cases curve.

This seems very strange considering that even for Taiwan (the country that is fairing the best) the recovery curve has a closer link to the death curve rather than the spread curve. This seems to suggest a rather constant recovery rate for China, right from the beginning of the outbreak even though they ignored the spread for two months.

Has China discovered a vaccine and they are refusing to inform the rest of the world? Perhaps we should look at these plots side by side. then we can have a better comparison.

China against Asia

One of these countries is not like the rest. China’s recovery curve appears to be a bit off. How did they manage to flatten the new cases curve so fast? It is even more amazing that they managed to flatten the curve after ignoring the problem for the months and then after less than 3 weeks the curve is flattened even though the incubation period for the CCP virus is more than two weeks.

Let us make the same comparison against Europe. Perhaps that is the problem.

China against Europe

This comparison, shows not only that somehow from the onset, after ignoring the spread of the virus for two months (and thus infecting the entire world), in a metropolitan area of more than 11 million people and despite the medical excellence of Germany (Who does not have a metropolitan area of more than 11 million people), Germany appears to have a lower recovery rate than China and a higher spread rate than China. Despite the fact that Germany did not ignore the outbreak for two months Germany stats at a confirmed case number of over 100 thousand. Whilst China ignored the spread for two months and after those two months the number of cases was around 40 thousand.

Perhaps putting all these numbers together was a bad idea. Let us see if we only look at the recovery rate and the death rate if we can see a better explanation. Maybe the Chinese Communist Party did not lie to their own people and the world. Maybe I am just over reacting.

Recovery Rate Asia

|Even for Taiwan the recovery rate is rather volatile. This makes sense since even for Taiwan the recovery rate does not rise at the same rate as the infection rate, this is due to the fact that Taiwan has kept the spread of the virus in check and now they are recovering gradually.

The case for Korea is different. Though they have had more success than some of the European countries they still have had more confirmed cases than Taiwan. Thus the volatile recovery rate.

Whilst for China the recovery rate is constantly rising as if the number of recovered cases rises at the same rate with the number of confirmed cases.

One of these countries is not like the rest. In fact, it seems strange that the more confirmed cases there are the higher the recovery rate appears to be. Which seems to be rather the opposite of what you would expect from the recovery/confirmed rate.

Recovery Rate Europe

In the case of Germany and Spain the recovery rate behaves as it would be expected. When the number of cases is low the recovery rate is at its highest. In the case of Spain, it was 1 at the beginning of the pandemic. At that period there were only 2 confirmed cases in Spain. For Italy it is more volatile but the recovery rate increases towards the end, it is no higher than 15% however. Whilst for China at the start of April it is at 75% which is an unnaturally high recovery rate for a pandemic of a new virus.

Death Rate Asia

As for the recovery rate the death rate appears to be unnaturally stable for China, it is almost as if the Chinese anticipated that this Pandemic would happen. But then again for Taiwan. who, so far has had less than 400 cases, the death rate appears to be falling. Even for Korea, which has managed to flatten the curve, the death rate appears to be higher closer to May, as the hospitals get overwhelmed by the large number of infected people. This does not appear to be the case for China.

Not to mention that the death rate is constantly below 4% whilst even Taiwan had a death rate of above 4% during February.

However, Taiwan is remarkable due to the fact that it’s death rate is falling. This is most likely due to the fact that in Taiwan the spread of the Virus has been stooped. To date (05-April-2020) they have less than 400 cases. Unlike in other places the hospitals in Taiwan have not been overwhelmed thus contributing to the falling mortality rate. This is not the case for China.

Death Rate Europe

Just like for Asia the difference in the death rate between the beginning of the pandemic and the end of the pandemic is much higher for the European countries. As the medical system gets overwhelmed the death rate starts to climb.

Whilst for China this does not appear to be the case, which does not seem at all realistic. It is almost as if the Chinese Medical System has a Pandemic Capacity all of the time. This is not at all feasible.

Inferences

We have noticed 3 base properties of the CCP pandemic:

• the spread is slow at first but becomes exponential even when quarantine is imposed, the best practice is the ‘Taiwan Method’, prevent, prevent, prevent.
• the death rate tends to grow with the spread of the virus, as the medical system gets overwhelmed the death rate starts to climb.
• the recovery rate is very high at the beginning of the pandemic but becomes very volatile as the medical system gets overwhelmed

And if you were paying attention China follows none of these 3 properties, which is a clear indicator that something is not right with the data provided by the Chinese Communist Party.

The real view

We shall use Spain and Italy as the case study and we shall extrapolate that to China.

Of course, there is the question of why should we use Spain and Italy as the case study. Because much like China these countries ignored the problem at the beginning of the pandemic. But unlike China none of these countries have a metropolitan area of over 11 million people, China has many such areas. And unlike China these countries do not have an authoritarian censorship apparatus in place.

## [1] 0.2707766 Italy average spread rate

## [1] 0.2455209 Spain average spread rate

The average spread rate for Italy and Spain was 27% and 24% respectively. Taking into consideration that Italy and Spain does not have any large metropolitan area at the scale of China we can assume that this is at least as high in China or at least it was for the two months in which China did nothing.

We can assume a spread rate of 25% a mid point between Spain and Italy.

We can extrapolate from here the actual number of people in China infected with the CCP Virus and compare it to countries that provide reliable statistical data.

Estimation Versus Asia

As we can see our estimation regarding the behavior of the CCP Virus in China, resembles the other countries in Asia, even Taiwan.

Estimation Versus Europe

Again our estimation appears far more realistic than what the Chinese Communist Party has provided.

Unfortunately these estimated numbers are also worrying. These numbers show us that at the middle of February the number of infected people in China was higher than 500 thousand people and more than 19 thousand people dead, this is far above the statistics provided by the CCP at the middle of February. It is hard to say what the current situation is but it is clear that the numbers reported by the CCP are much lower that what is feasibly possible.

Confirmation

First, let me state the obvious, a virus does not care about national borders, about political leanings and about propaganda. As we’ve seen before the virus has a clear pattern that gets repeated in many different countries both in Europe and in Asia. So unless the CCP found a vaccine in a tenth of the time it would take any other country in the world, or unless the Chinese People have a very high immunity to a virus they had never encountered before, then the virus behaved in China as it did in the rest of the world.

To that I would like to add the case of the flue. No I am not comparing the flue to the CCP Virus. But why is it that annually over 10 thousand people in the US are stated as killed by the flue and in China it is usually less than 100. Because the CCP does not extrapolate any of their data to the rest of the country. They only provided the cases which they confirmed (or they are willing to confirm). I have no doubt that a similar situation would be valid for the CCP Virus.

Empirical Evidence

But of course these are just estimations (that is not a bad thing), thus I would point the reader to the following article: Stacks of urns in Wuhan

If you are not interested in reading the article allow me to summaries. On average in Wuhan, 154 people die each day or they did before the pandemic. Let us just be generous and say that 200 people die each day in Wuhan.

This is divided between 4 funeral homes in Wuhan. Most of which if not all are cremations. I shall assume that these 200 deaths each day are divided equally between the 4 funeral homes since it would be macabre and bizarre if people had a funeral home preference.

That being said it means that each of these funeral homes would deal with 50 deaths, 50 cremations each day. That is equal to 18250 cremations each year for each funeral home or 1500 cremations each month for each funeral home.

However, the article linked above gives the statement of a truck driver that delivered 3500 urns each day, for two days to just one of these funeral homes. So let us assume that this was for the whole month that would be 7000 urns per funeral home. So let us be generous and say that this was for the whole month, not just for that day.

That would still mean that the increase in mortality in Wuhan for just that month was 400%.

The general rule is that when the official data is contradicted by the data from other sources, the estimation and the empirical evidence, then that data is either a lie or of very poor quality.

Conclusion

I have very much enjoyed the analyses and the dashboards created by so many talented people. But I am sorry to say that if the data is of poor quality, or just misleading I dare say that the conclusion could hardly be better.

Thus, I am asking people to stop suggesting that authoritarianism is the solution to a pandemic. I point you again to Taiwan, a liberal democracy who has dealt with the CCP Virus better than any other country and yet most other nations don’t even recognize Taiwan as a country. And to add insult to injury, China and the “World” Health Organization have been actively suppressing the data from Taiwan and have been openly avoiding the subject of Taiwan.

Please stop suggesting that the “China Model” is the solution, especially considering the behavior of the CCP so far and even more so when a clear and established democracy has had far greater success and in a fair, transparent and democratic manner.

All the best and good health to all.

Data Source: https://www.kaggle.com/imdevskp/corona-virus-report

Date: 05-Apr-2020