China still puzzles me a bit. Part of that stems from how much trust can be placed in the data.
First, the case fatality rate appears to be above 3%. I’m hoping that is a function of inadequate data on the burden of disease on those with mild or asymptomatic infection. We simply do not know. However, if there is a large cohort that has gone undetected, then things will be much better than they appear, exactly what I had been alluding to when I early was first writing about this virus.
Second, it’s a great sign that the incident cases are dropping. The question though is whether this is due to any aggressive social measures by the government, inadequate means for testing, or other factors that are difficult to determine from only having the perspective of data, not boots on the ground observation.
In summary though, I want to reemphasize that this is not a particularly good model for disease in the west due to the reasons I wrote about earlier.
