The Chinese are low-balling it by a factor of 5. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
A totalitarian govt like China has no clear advantage in dealing with unexpected disasters. What they may gain in ruthlessness of response cannot compensate for belatedness caused by official denial.
The Narrative is your enemy. God and math always beat Pravda. It's not even close.
What the official Narrative does is increase the latency of the system. If time isn't critical there may be no penalty. But in a fast moving system the bullet hits you before you hear it.
Globalization drastically speeded up the rate at which events happened but paradoxically its management was reposed on sluggish, saurian transnational institutions that fell hopelessly behind.
