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China’s True COVID-19 Death Toll 366 Times Higher
Than Official Figure, Analyst Says
By Eva Fu and David Zhang
The Epoch Times
January 15, 2022
in Xi'an, China on Jan. 11, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
The Chinese regime has likely understated the COVID-19 death rate by as much as 17,000 percent in a systematic data suppression campaign to sustain its political image, according to a U.S. analyst.
That would put the number of COVID-19 deaths in China at around 1.7 million rather than 4,636, the two-year cumulative death figure that the Chinese authorities have maintained on the books. That’s 366 times the official figure.
Those findings made by George Calhoun, director of the quantitative finance program at Stevens Institute of Technology, were based on data as of January generated by a model developed by The Economist.
A vast majority of China’s officially recorded deaths came from Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic, with only hundreds more reported in the rest of the country.
The Chinese regime only reported two additional deaths since April 1, 2020, ranking China as having the world’s lowest COVID-19 death rate, which Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese epidemiologist overseeing China’s outbreak response, boasted about just last week.
But that jaw-dropping data point—hundreds of times lower than that of America, gave Calhoun pause.
“That’s impossible. It’s medically impossible, it’s statistically impossible,” Calhoun told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.
“Remember, in 2020, there was no vaccine, there was no treatment,” he said. “So you had an unprotected population that has shown zero COVID deaths, even though they’ve had tens of thousands of cases.”
Curating public records and previous research reports, and analyzing the regime’s pattern of hushing up scandals in the past, Calhoun arrived at a conclusion that to him seems obvious: China has made its “zero-COVID” policy a political objective, and is systematically falsifying data to prop up the claim.
“Somebody put a message out at the end of the first quarter and 2020 and said, ‘Okay, we want to see zero-COVID. That’s our policy.’ And it became zero-COVID,” he said.
Anomalies
The first “smoking gun” is a sudden drop of COVID-19 deaths since April 2020 from mainland China after a “raging” rate of infection, Calhoun said.
From April 1, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2022, over 22,102 cases have been reported in mainland China, according to data from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Only two deaths were recorded over the same period.
By comparison, Hong Kong, which counted about half as many COVID-19 infections over the period, reported 213 deaths.
The case fatality rate (the proportion of those infected who died) in Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic averaged around 7.7 percent, more than five times that of the United States and four times the world average.
Case fatality rate in Wuhan in comparison with other parts of the world. (Courtesy of George Calhoun)
Two scenarios are possible: either the virus was “far more deadly in early 2020 in Wuhan than anywhere else, at any other time,” or alternatively, the official infection numbers from China were too small by a factor of three or four, Calhoun said.
Over the following 20 months, there has been a consistent lack of COVID-19 data from China. As of September, China has become the world’s only country that has not provided complete data on excess mortality—unexplained deaths beyond normal trends that can offer a crude estimate of uncounted COVID deaths, a survey from the University of Washington shows.
The Economist model seeks to make up for that data gap. Based on the model, Calhoun said China’s excess mortality was off by about 17,000 percent. This discrepancy, he added, surpasses those even by countries mired in large-scale civil unrest, such as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela. Venezuela, the highest among the four, has an estimated excess COVID-19 death ratio of 1,100 percent.
Excess mortality for China and several other countries. (Courtesy of George Calhoun)
Undercounting virus deaths is widespread across countries. Based on The Economist’s model, the United States’ official tally is short by about 30 percent. But China’s case is extreme.
“They are through the roof,” Calhoun said of the discrepancy between China’s official figures and the estimated true death toll.
“Something’s driving that,” Calhoun said.
While the virus might not be all to blame for the jump, tight-lipped Chinese authorities have offered few clues as to what might have happened otherwise.
Calhoun’s estimate coincides with anecdotal evidence from local residents, troves of internal documents leaked to The Epoch Times, and research studies into the impact of the virus in China, all of which indicate that the official figures have been grossly understated.
During the early months when the pandemic first broke out in China’s Wuhan, some of the city’s funeral home workers told The Epoch Times they were working nonstop to cremate bodies. In March, thousands of ash urns were delivered to one of the crematoriums, when the official death number was over 2,000. The authorities raised the fatality figure by 50 percent a month later, attributing the gap to administrative inefficiencies.
A study published in The Lancet last March said as many as 968,800 people in Wuhan had antibodies by April 2020, which would mean they developed immunity to the virus after being infected.
The data inconsistencies are not limited to Wuhan alone. During a two-week period in February 2020, an internal document from Shandong health authorities showed that close to 2,000 people had tested positive for the virus, but only 755 infections were publicly recorded.
Leaked documents suggest that the regime has continued to deem virus control as a political task.
In files recently obtained by The Epoch Times, a top Chinese official of Shaanxi Province, where the virus-hit Xi’an is the capital, ordered the “toughest measures” to be put in place to block the virus’ further spread from Xi’an. With the Beijing Winter Olympics coming up, a spillover would create “systemic risk” and “smear the national image,” the document read.
Thousands protest Europe’s first mandatory vaccine plan
The Austrian government’s plan to make vaccination against Covid-19
mandatory has sparked mass protests
© Ruptly
Thousands of Austrians took to the streets of Vienna in protest of an upcoming parliamentary vote to make Covid-19 vaccines mandatory, with protesters calling for the government to be replaced.
Protesters carried Austrian flags through the streets on Saturday as police in riot gear holding helmets could be seen standing in a line nearby. “Face your guilt and turn back!” one banner read, while others accused Austria’s right-wing ruling party – the Austrian People’s Party (OVP) – of splitting the nation with its coronavirus policies.
Protesters could also be heard shouting, “The government must go!” while one young child was caught on camera handing flowers to riot police.
In November, the Austrian government signalled its intentions to make vaccination against Covid-19 mandatory, and Parliament is scheduled to vote on the issue next week. If the mandatory vaccination plans are passed, Austrians could face repeated fines of thousands of euros for remaining unvaccinated.
Austria has implemented some of the strictest Covid-19 response measures in the world – which equally have been met with some of the largest protests. Measures have included lockdowns only for the unvaccinated and a ban on those who have yet to receive the vaccine from entering restaurants and stores.
If lawmakers back the latest government plan, Austria will become the first nation in the EU to make vaccination against Covid-19 obligatory.
DNA test to be added to Covid screening
People most at risk from coronavirus can be identified with a simple genetic check,
health officials say
The Polish Health Ministry is planning to introduce a new type of screening for coronavirus after a gene was discovered that determines the likelihood of a patient suffering from severe or fatal Covid-19.
People most at risk of suffering the severest effects or even dying of coronavirus can be identified using a genetic test, health officials in Poland revealed this week. The study that resulted in the discovery was supported by the country’s Ministry of Health and Medical Research Agency, and involved around 1,500 patients with Covid-19. Researchers from the Medical University of Bialystok identified a gene in chromosome 3 that significantly influences how badly the virus will affect an individual.
“After more than a year and a half of work, it was possible to identify a gene responsible for a predisposition to becoming seriously ill [with Covid],” Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said at a press conference on Thursday.
The findings will now be applied to help identify patients at increased risk from the virus when or even before they contract the infection. The Health Ministry plans to develop and launch a “relatively simple” and quick genetic test that can be performed alongside PCR screening within a few months.
It could also be implemented around the world to help people with apparent genetic preconditions, Polish officials said.
“This is a step towards personalized medicine, which is the medicine of the future – when, knowing our genome, we will know what harm to expect when it comes to our health,” Joanna Zajkowska, a professor at the University of Bialystok, told Polish Radio.
If at least one version of the gene is present in the chromosome, a patient is more than twice as likely to suffer the worst effects of Covid-19 or die, according to the study of genetic individual susceptibility led by Marcin Moniuszko and Miroslaw Kwasniewski. The gene is the fourth-most-important factor responsible for acute disease, and is said to be an even more important risk factor than comorbidity. It comes after age, obesity and gender (men are believed to suffer from Covid worse than women), according to the study.
The gene is present in around every 10th person in Europe, while in India the rate is almost three times higher, with some 27% of the population being genetically prone to severe Covid. In Poland, where the death rate from the virus is higher than the EU average, around 14% of the population carry the gene.
“From the beginning of the pandemic, we have been trying to understand why, even among people of similar age, some are infected asymptomatically while others fight for their lives,” said a spokesman for the university. “Thanks to the research, we are getting closer to understanding this phenomenon.”
People with type A-positive blood are at higher risk of respiratory failure from Covid
The Polish study is not the first to suggest correlation between certain genetic factors and patients’ reactions to Covid-19. A genome-wide analysis of Italians and Spaniards in 2020 studied blood types and a chromosome 3 gene cluster in association with respiratory failure caused by coronavirus. Extreme susceptibility to severe illness was found in persons with certain DNA markers, while the study also showed that people with type A-positive blood are at higher risk of respiratory failure from Covid.
Other research from Germany also detected correlation between a gene cluster on the same chromosome and the risk of severe infection. A mutation which helps fight off RNA viruses, inherited by some people from our Neanderthal ancestors, has been found.
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