A Trump administration official has reportedly told Fox News that the coronavirus numbers that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has reported are so underreported that it is “arithmetically impossible” that their numbers are accurate.
“A Trump administration official tells Fox News they estimate the PRC has miscalculated and underreported the true tally nationwide by at least a factor of 50,” Fox News’s Bret Baier reported.
The official told Fox News that the exact number was not currently known, adding, “we do know the about 80,000 infections and 4,000 deaths as reported by the Chinese Communist Party propaganda are not even remotely close.”
“Intelligence sources, asked about recent reports of funeral homes in Wuhan becoming overwhelmed by the volume of new corpses and plagued by a shortage of urns to hold virus victims’ remains, declined to confirm the existence of classified satellite images,” Fox News added. “They did affirm, however, that the reporting is within the realm of possibility based on the evidentiary record.”
The officials pointed to funeral homes in Wuhan that have reportedly been operating non-stop during the pandemic, which originated in Wuhan.
During a single 13-day period, officials estimated that “a lower-end total tally of 45,500 corpses incinerated and returned to their families.”
The numbers given to Fox News fall well within the realm of what has been reported by a variety of media organizations.
U.S. intelligence officials told Bloomberg News at the start of the month that China intentionally lied about the extent of the outbreak in their country and that China’s numbers were “fake.”
The Washington Post reported that the number of deaths in Wuhan alone was likely over 40,000:
The coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe officially claimed 2,563 lives in Wuhan, where it began in a market that sold exotic animals for consumption. But evidence emerging from the city as it stirs from its two-month hibernation suggests the real death toll is exponentially higher. …
Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released a new “conservative estimation” two weeks ago on the true extent of China’s coronavirus outbreak and determined that China, even when given every benefit of the doubt, had severely and “deliberately” under-reported its real numbers.
AEI estimated that China had a bare minimum of 2.9 million cases outside the Hubei province and that the total number of deaths was likely well over 100,000.
AEI reported:
A natural reaction to figures in the low millions: China is plainly lying but not by nearly that much, because the Communist Party cannot hide 2-3 million cases. Yes, it can. Flu illnesses in the US neared 20 million before the end of January—before COVID-19 was widespread here, with two months left of flu season, and at less than one-fourth China’s population. Chinese respiratory illnesses of all kinds could easily exceed 100 million, hiding 2.9 million COVID-19 cases. …
Mortality remains sadly unsettled, but China’s size would obscure even a high rate. Hubei’s COVID-19 mortality should be quite high, due to the obvious inability to prepare and being initially overwhelmed. It is 4.7 percent. If extended over the rest of China—which is thankfully an exaggeration—that would produce 136,000 deaths over what is now more than three months. In a typical three-month period in ex-Hubei China before COVID-19, nearly 2.5 million people died. Even that many deaths would be easily obscured.
Top scientific advisers have reportedly told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China could have underreported their numbers “by a factor of 15 to 40 times.”
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