[ExI] Trusting China information was Protest

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

[keith[

>> The question I was asking was is if you think the data from China about this
outbreak is factual and if you don't, why are they reporting this incident?

> Hi Keith, hmmm hard to say.  I tend to think of these kinds of questions in
percentages, as people who play real-money ideas futures do.  I would
estimate about a 5% chance China reported their covid cases accurately to
within an order of magnitude.  I will grant they didn't know (or care) about
their rural cases.

They certainly should or they would get rapid spread when one of the
rural infected came to town.

> I don't know why they are reporting this outbreak, but best guess is that we
have eyes and ears inside China reporting it, so we already knew.

It was public news in China.  It's hard to do large scale lockdowns
without telling people.

> It would further damage their credibility to deny it.

I am not a fan of the Chinese government and they can be secretive,
but there are things like this pandemic that don't make sense to try
to cover up.

And there is next to no reason for them to cover up how they have
done.  It is much better than the US has done.  The US, for a variety
of reasons, squandered a couple of months at the start.

Keith