Thread by @jburnmurdoch

My brilliant colleagues @C_BruceLockhart and @BobHaslett illustrate some important points here:

• There are major doubts over the Chinese numbers
• But there’s less doubting the general pattern — largely containing the outbreak in one region
• US singularly failed to do this

https://twitter.com/C_BruceLockhart/status/1245010263998369793

Let’s take a guess and say the Chinese death toll is over 10,000 rather than the 3,000 quoted. That’s still an order of magnitude lower than forecast US death toll of 100k-200k, and the reason will be that China did largely contain this to Wuhan/Hubei.

Plenty of reason to doubt exactly how many died in China, but we know China aggressively surveils and quarantines.

Movements of people who’ve been in Hubei are monitored and restricted, and some reports say when they enter other provinces they’re immediately detected & tested.

I’m not saying other countries should follow suit on that level of surveillance, but I am saying: China sought to contain the virus in worst-affected region at all costs, and thus kept death toll lower than it would have otherwise been (whatever it truly is). US has not done this

While we’re at it here’s the difference between Wuhan’s lockdown and others. 10 weeks after it began, Wuhan’s roads still silent.

Londoners are still driving merrily around. LA similar. At least NYC & Paris have got the message across, but they’re still not Wuhan-level lockdowns

Overall point being: yes we doubt the numbers coming out of China, but we don’t doubt that containing the outbreak in Wuhan has been broadly effective.

Other countries did not learn that lesson, have let outbreaks go national, and may face longer lockdowns as a result.