This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 October 2021 and 9 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jjjjdddd199704 (article contribs).


Regarding the numbers

The fact that this article glosses over the fantasy numbers that we've gotten out of China casts doubt on the entire article, and Wikipedia in general. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.150.199.13 (talk • contribs) 09:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@89.150.199.13: This controversy is mentioned at COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China#Statistics. Are there changes you would suggest based on reliable sources? -- Beland (talk) 03:07, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree with OP on some facts, which I'm going to explain below. First of all, I'd rather change the paragraph's title into “Controversies” for clarity (on a side note, the Notes section is present but empty).
The provided sources don't confirm that these numbers are not tampered, rather they speculate they might be correct based on the assumption that the strong containment policies ended the local epidemic. Despite this, the article says that the data is now “considered accurate” as if that's the widely accepted consensus.
The paragraph also mentioned “rumors or unreported cases” but not by whom nor does it implement references: one of those sources have been the US Intelligence.
China is also refusing to give WHO more detailed data concerning the earlier stages of the pandemic. This happened earlier this year.
This article is excessively taking Chinese Government's statements for granted, and doesn't even mention the many controversies that surround them. Especially considering past untrustworthiness of other declared statistics in the past.
For neutrality and accuracy, both this excerpt and the article it comes from should be updated to reflect at least these issues. CapoFantasma97 (talk) 23:20, 17 November 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A "Controversies" section is probably not a good idea per WP:CSECTION. Also, we should avoid citing The Sun, which is generally an unreliable source. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 05:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Economic projections

@Mx. Granger: Greetings! Regarding this revert: In general, WP:CRYSTAL has been interpreted such that economic projections are not included in articles, and we simply report the statistics after the years in question have occurred. Expert opinions about the future are generally not included unless they are notable in themselves, or the topic is the future of some thing. I try to apply the "is the event almost certain to happen?" standard. The event of China having the world's largest GDP in 2028 is certainly possible, but I'm not sure it's even more likely to happen than not. These types of economic forecasts are usually wrong, and given the extreme uncertainty introduced by COVID-19 disruption of international trade, labor availability, transportation, supply chain, and possible local outbreaks, projections made in this environment are even less likely to be accurate. This is also only one expert group; for balance, if we were to explore this projection, we should include multiple perspectives. I don't think this prediction is important enough to spend that much text on it, and it's not helpful to readers anyway, since in the end no one really knows what's going to happen. -- Beland (talk) 03:16, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think it's informative to provide expert views on the scale of China's economic recovery relative to other countries. It's not prohibited by WP:CRYSTAL, which says "It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, if discussion is properly referenced. ... Predictions, speculation, forecasts and theories stated by reliable, expert sources or recognized entities in a field may be included". The paragraph currently includes two contrasting views, one from a British think tank and one from the Chinese government, but we can add more expert views if you think that would be useful. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 08:16, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Ah, true, there are two sources, but they seem to be contradictory. I don't think there are any reliable sources on this subject, and it does not seem useful to readers to say "the economy might do very well in the near future, or not" which is pretty much the case for all economies at all times. I'll ask for a third opinion. -- Beland (talk) 00:55, 18 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
(Asked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics#Economic projections. -- Beland (talk) 00:58, 18 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding the reliability of the sources, both of them (Reuters and CNBC) are reliable in this context. Thanks for requesting a third opinion. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 17:10, 18 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Coming over from WT:ECON after post there asking for a 3rd opinion. My feeling on this is that the edit in question is allowed and not forbidden by WP:CRYSTAL. However, I believe that it's not appropriate to reinstate the text that was removed, as the opinion of the think tank is speculative and already somewhat dated (about a year old). I think it would be somewhat misleading to include now, as there are newer reports out there that don't say the same thing. (e.g. this one ) What I would suggest is to look for some more recent projections concerning growth after Covid, with a discussion of the varying views. Or, given that it's all highly speculative anyway, to leave out discussion of the topic altogether. LK (talk) 05:41, 21 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Okay, that's fair enough. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 17:10, 22 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree that we should use more recent reports, but I'd also like to point out that the higher 2Q 2021 year-on-year growth in the US that that WSJ article points out is a one-time effect due to the fact that US GDP in 2Q 2020 was heavily impacted by CoVID-19. Year-on-year comparisons with 2020 are extremely fraught with difficulties. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:11, 23 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The “2021 academic study”

Definitely edit war material here, but let’s try anyway. In response to Mx. Granger’s edit summary: I think there’s a critical distinction between nationality and ethnicity. Suggesting that Chinese people, wherever they are, must be biased on issues concerning Mainland China is arguably racist. But there are plenty of overseas Chinese (of which I am one).

On the other hand, I doubt anyone who knows the first thing about China would dispute that Mainland Chinese are quite nationalistic, and that the Chinese government is authoritarian and heavily influences what research can be published by state employees (of whom 17 of the 18 authors in the study were).

It is also worth noting that the article is all but contradictory. It’s unfortunately buried deep, but a passage cites a Washington Post story which in turn references two estimates circulated by locals on social media of the COVID death toll in Wuhan (based on the numerous photos of urns released by the seven funeral homes and the number of furnaces known be to operated by them in total): 42,000 and 46,800, as opposed to the ~2,500 official figure. The Radio Free Asia piece also quotes a resident of the surrounding Hubei province who says that most people in the area believe there to have been over 40,000 COVID deaths in Wuhan.

On that basis, I support pointing out the likely conflict of interest among the authors behind the study in question, particularly when it’s the only one we have on the subject. Encyclopedia Lu (talk) 21:35, 22 December 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I don't think it makes sense for the article to randomly note the ethnicities (or nationalities) of the authors of a source we're citing. Are there any reliable sources that say the authors of the study have a conflict of interest? If there are such sources, then we can cite them. But if this is just an insinuation that we are making up, it's not suitable for Wikipedia per WP:OR. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 22:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You don't need another source to question the credibility of a particular source. You need to assess them yourself by matching the standards provided at WP:RS. It does not deserve to be on the lead anyway per the reasons provided by Encyclopedia Lu. Nor it should be used for countering reliable sources which one other editor had just removed by falsely marking them as "fringe". Remember that the sentence "Many news outlets reported that the Chinese government had deliberately under-reported the extent of infections and deaths" was added only after strong consensus at Talk:COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China/Archive 2#In the lead. Even after that lead was published, the reliable sources continued to report the intended underreporting by China.[1][2] TolWol56 (talk) 10:53, 11 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The BMJ is a reliable source for epidemiological information; this is not affected by the ethnicities of the scientists who contribute to it. The CCDC study you reference estimating the true number of cases in Wuhan should be covered in the article; I will add it in a moment. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 17:05, 11 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The claims of 40,000 or more deaths are scientifically discredited.

First, the claims come from Chinese social media, and are based purely on speculation about numbers of urns delivered to funeral homes and how many cremations could theoretically be performed by those funeral homes. The speculation was incredibly shaky to begin with, because it's not actually based on any solid data and completely ignores the fact that people die of things other than COVID-19. In a city of 11 million people, in fact, you'd expect several tens of thousands of people to die of non-COVID-related causes over the course of 76 days (the length of Wuhan's lockdown).

Second, a study of excess mortality published by The BMJ concludes that approximately 4600 more people than usual died of pneumonia in Wuhan during the outbreak. Outside of Hubei province, there was actually a decrease in pneumonia deaths. The authors attribute this decrease to the fact that the outbreak was mostly contained to Wuhan and a few surrounding cities, and that lockdown measures elsewhere in China reduced flu transmission. This mortality estimate is close to the official death toll, but 10x smaller than the numbers that Radio Free Asia and other news media talked about (based on Chinese social media, as I explained above).

Third, multiple serological studies (Nature Medicine, The Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific) have estimated the fraction of people in Wuhan, Hubei province and China who ever contracted the virus. These studies find that only a few percent of people in Wuhan were ever infected, and that infection rates were so low that they were undetectable (with the given sample size) outside of Hubei province. This level of infection is consistent with the official death toll, and with the death toll estimated by the paper in The BMJ. It is completely inconsistent with the death tolls speculated about by Radio Free Asia (again, based on Chinese social media).

Fourth, various scientific studies have noted the lack of infections and deaths among Hong Kong and Taiwan residents in China. A study published by The Lancet Medicine found that just 4% of evacuees from Hubei province (mostly from Wuhan itself) to Hong Kong were seropositive. This is consistent with what the seroprevalence studies I linked to above found, and it's again consistent with the official death toll and the excess mortality estimate published in The BMJ. And a commentary article in the scientific journal Global Public Health notes that despite the fact that large numbers of people from Taiwan and Hong Kong live in Wuhan, none of them died in the Wuhan outbreak. The authors note that it certainly would have been publicized if any of them had. This puts an upper limit on the number of COVID-19 deaths in Wuhan that is many times lower than what Radio Free Asia speculated.

Basically, the situation is that all the scientific evidence points to the official death toll being roughly correct. On the other hand, we have social media speculation that was briefly picked up by Radio Free Asia (which is US government media, and which has an explicit mandate to report negatively on China) and then by other international outlets back in late March / early April 2020. So, which are we going to give more weight: peer-reviewed scientific research published in highly reliable international scientific journals, or "Some people on social media are saying" articles published almost two years ago in news outlets?

Finally, the fact that a scientist is Chinese is totally irrelevant, and everyone needs to stop discussing the nationality of authors on scientific papers. These are papers that have gone through rigorous peer-review and editorial review at leading international scientific journals. Writing them off because of the authors' nationality is unseemly, to put it very politely. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:34, 11 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

3-way merge proposal being drafted at Draft:Chinese government response to COVID-19

A merge proposal is in the process of being drafted that may interest watchers of this talk page. For details please see Draft talk:Chinese government response to COVID-19 § About this article ––FormalDude talk 08:06, 23 December 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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