The UN estimates, and no serious researcher disputes, that China fails to report nearly ***49%*** of its total deaths in a *normal* year.

Florida meanwhile has among the strongest sunshine/data transparency laws on earth.

but you go off https://twitter.com/rzhongnotes/status/1262698582752272385

yeah i'll happily clutch my pearls of "consistent and complete vital statistics reporting for 105 years straight" and "complete and reliable death counts within a few weeks"

them is nice pearls next to "the bodies literally never get counted" https://twitter.com/rzhongnotes/status/1262698582752272385

The extent to which the entire statistical system of China is built on complete fabrications of basic data about how many people live in the country at all is debated; optimists think the error range of Chinese population is just +/- 10 or 20 million people.

Proportionally, that's like saying Europe may or may not contain Ireland or Croatia; we just can't say for sure.

That's the *best* case.

There are thoughtful, careful researchs who put +/- 100 million people around China's population.

And on vital statistics like births and deaths, the range of sober, non-conspiratorial debate is an error range of like +/- 30% of the total value.

BUT SURE

Florida firing their webmaster is the same thing

I'm literally in the Washington Post print edition this week arguing that we can't reopen safely without ramping up quarantine and isolation programs, but whatever, sure, I just love Applees. (spoiler: I do, actually!)
https://twitter.com/rzhongnotes/status/1262706453615435777

Reality:

I just won't sit for a false equivalence between the systematic fraudulence of ~everything China publishes and Florida firing its COVID webmaster.

You wanna argue Florida is VERY BAD, you go ahead. I'm no fan of Florida Man. But in the tweets I'm now blocked from seeing (lol), the argument made is, I kid you note, that complaining about China's reporting is pearl clutching.

This is probably the lowest-hostility interaction that has ever led to me getting blocked.

Apparently we're super sensitive about the completeness of China's vital registration systems today!

Anyways just so everybody knows China's vital registration system is abysmal. Much poorer countries do much better. And then the stuff they do publish is often pretty clearly fake. And I'm not even talking about COVID data!

So, she's blocked me, but she's chatting with others about how I made up this statistic.

UN estimate suggests <50% registration for deaths, and for births they don't even bother giving an estimate. https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/crvs/index.cshtml

World Bank suggests that 62% of all vital events were reported in 2015; not sure if that's merging births/deaths or what.

got out of thread: https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1262710127674580994

I dunno what data caused the conflict reported on in the news. And neither do any of y'all!

But I know that it's insane to act like "Florida fired a webmaster" is akin to "There might be 100 million fewer Chinese people than the government claims, we honestly have no idea."

And to be clear, my irritation here literally is about the data quality comparison. It probably seems petty to many, but since it's, ya know, my whole career, it's not petty to me.