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Comment by henriquez | Hacker News Reader

> If you change methodology, you really have to go back and recast historic numbers. But that isn't being done.

This makes sense~ without some kind of reporting standard, every jurisdiction is free to apply their own methodology and we're prone to receive inaccurate (or politically biased) information. That might mean inflating numbers, or deflating (as is the case with China, an enormous country with miraculously no infections or deaths since the day they coincidentally kicked all western journalists out).

New York changing their methodology out of the blue this week puts a curious asterisk on both the numbers we're getting from them now and the numbers we got from them previously. Why the sudden change?

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NY still has their old number of "confirmed deaths" which they were using previously and continue to report as a separate number from "probable deaths".

The article linked to doesn't mention that but what NY is doing makes sense. It lets us see the general trends using the old methodology while still being smart about counting going forward.

It is very open and every state + country should do something similar.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronav...

> as is the case with China, an enormous country with miraculously no infections or deaths since the day they coincidentally kicked all western journalists out

Where are you getting your information? There has not been a single day since the outbreak where China has reported no new cases or deaths. They just added ~1000 deaths today in a move similar to TFA.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

They also did not "kick all western journalists out". Here's a report from the BBC with interviews of people in Wuhan that was published a week ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52197054

Somehow, the number of deaths has become a partisan political issue -- with one party wanting to suppress the numbers and another party wanting to "run up the score" -- because the lockdowns are a partisan issue now.

Democrats want to keep the lockdowns through at least June 1st, with major restrictions on movement at least through 2022, and some restrictions forever (see the "new normal" propaganda push)

Republicans see an opportunity to compare these lockdowns with authoritarian policies from history, and are pushing to end restrictions quickly, and make it harder for states and counties to impose lockdowns in the future.

As a result, virtually nobody has an interest in just reporting how the virus is going. Everyone has a narrative in mind, and chooses facts based more or less solely on how they promote that narrative.

New York wants high numbers. Many Midwest states want low numbers. So they produce them.

China never kicked Western journalists out. It revoked journalist liscence from a number of journalists from Washington Post, nyt, and wall street journal as a retailation when the US designated five Chinese media as Beijing operatives. Media from other countries, UK, Germany etc are all in China. You can see reporting and interviews in China by bbc, Reuters and many others right now.

As from the virus in China, as person who have many relatives and friends near wuhan and in Beijing, from all information sources I can gather, there is no massive spread in China right now. They staying highly alert but there isn't a large number of infections right now. And my anecdotal observation on the severity of the issue during February matches with the official count. So I don't believe there is massive under-reporting. All my friends and family don't buy there is massive deliberate under reporting as well.

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