I'm glad it's happening (better late than never), but they really should have started doing this a year ago.
In fact a year ago, exactly, the existence of COVID was still being denied or downplayed by the Chinese government. Very few people in the US even knew about it, and only if very plugged in to Chinese social media or non government sources.
what I said:
>In fact a year ago, exactly
Key word is exactly, as in Jan 12, 2020.
But just a few days before, the Times is a lot more rosy, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou...
"There is no evidence that the new virus is readily spread by humans, which would make it particularly dangerous, and it has not been tied to any deaths"
Clearly, between Jan 8 and late Jan, was the time of massive increased interest, so we're not really in disagreement.
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-...
Trust means their official numbers within a reasonable margin of error of correct. Nobody have perfectly accurate numbers, but the ones are trust are generally not miscounting by enough to worry about.