הומור שחור" - תחקיר של אן.טי.די בנוגע למספר המתים האמיתי מקורונה בסין (43 דקות, תרגום מלא לעברית)"

Welcome to China In Focus, I'm Tiffany Meyer. China's suppression of data about COVID-19's origins is now public knowledge, but little attention is given to the ongoing concealment of how many people died. In this exclusive report, we look beyond China's official numbers to reveal the rest of the story and the truth is shocking. Let's zoom in. Beijing is facing its worst COVID outbreak. Around 250 million people were infected during the first weeks of December. China had reported only 37 deaths caused by COVID-19. We urge China to be fully transparent about what's going on. We do know that we don't know the cases right now. Now the BBC has found evidence of a considerable COVID death toll in China's rural areas. If you visit local crematoriums, there's a lot of people have died. The regime's prestige is based upon this idea that they are really good managers of everything that's going on in the country. And if the COVID numbers are not supporting that, well, one way to address that problem is to eliminate the COVID numbers, right? If you believe the COVID-19 data reported by Chinese authorities, the country's COVID-19 response is a miracle in human history. No one in China has died of COVID-19 since February 23rd, although 90% of the population has been infected. And for three full years, right up to the day Beijing ended its zero COVID-19 policy, China reported just over 5,200 COVID-19 deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, China's COVID-19 death toll stood at less than 90,000 or 600 thousandths of a percent of the country's population. Now, according to official statistics, China's COVID-19 mortality rate is falling at the fastest pace in the world. By February, authorities reported deaths were down to less than 1,000 per week. That's an extremely low mortality rate, just 7 and 10 millions of a percent for the entire country. By the end of February, COVID-19 deaths reported in China fell 100%, all the way down to zero. That's from over 4,000 daily deaths just a month prior. In comparison, COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. peaked at over 2,600 a day in early 2022, and then fell by 46% to about 1,400 a month later. In other words, over the same one month period, China's COVID-19 deaths dropped by more than double the U.S. rate, signaling the steepest drop in COVID-19 deaths worldwide. In response, the Chinese regime was triumphant. In mid-February, the Politburo Standing Committee, Beijing's decision-making organ, met for talks. Officials there said the Communist Party's policies and adjustment of COVID-19 controls since November had been, quote, totally right, and that the public would agree with the conclusion. But if you suspect China's data is misleading, perhaps these reports can shed some light. First, a new wave of the virus exploded in China since at least December 2022, if not earlier. Signs of the surge were everywhere. We spoke to hospital staff, funeral home personnel, and local residents across China about the situation. To protect their identities, we altered some of their voices. We're short on beds now. All beds have been full since the new year, basically every day. For cremation, we don't have space to store bodies. It's all full, because during this time, the pressure on funeral homes throughout the city is very tense, and we are not allowed to rest now. My friend is doing a funeral service chain. People died and some have set up a hall or something. Now the business is booming, all booked. A friend of mine, his dad, said that during this period, a month and a half, he's been to seven memorials. My neighbor told me before the new year that more than 20 people died, and that community wasn't big, with only dozens of houses. U.S. data analyst George Calhoun has examined COVID-19 data from China over the past few years, especially the official COVID-19 death toll. So if you have an outbreak that is out of control and breaking down your medical institutions and putting stress on the economy in the way that it has, well, that doesn't support your story. Former U.S. Army officer and microbiologist Sean Lin says in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, the so-called success of its zero COVID-19 approach, marked by severe lockdowns, contact tracing and mass testing, only proves the system's superiority. An incentive, they want to present an image to Chinese people as well, to the whole world, that the Chinese model works, the CCP model. But that claim only works if the numbers add up. The only problem is, can we trust the numbers? The CCP's CDC announced that from December 7th last year to January 8th this year, in the span of just over a month, only 37 people across the country died of COVID-19. 37. That's the official figure of COVID-related deaths reported in China after the zero COVID-19 policy ended on December 7th. On January 14th, just a week later, China's health officials announced a big edit, raising the official COVID-19 death toll since last December from 37 to about 60,000. Their kind of like a reported number gave people a kind of like the impression of jumping around, a sudden jump with no explanation, which does not make any sense. Dr. Mai He is a pathologist at Washington University School of Medicine. Since then, reports of overwhelmed hospitals and overflowing funeral homes have inundated the internet and global media headlines. 18 people died at the same time. From 6pm to now, a total of 8 hours. Carriages passed by you one by one. Carriages were lined up with people who died one by one. Look at this car. This was filmed yesterday, not today. It's been a year. Why are all the black people dying? My close relatives, among them, close relatives, among them, there are four died already. That is from one family. 37 deaths. That's, you almost think there's a sense of humor, dark humor there to report a number like that. In February, Time magazine quoted Yan Zhonghuang, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations for Global Health, as saying, the problem for China is the extent of that undercount or what causes that undercount. First, you have the strict definition that discourages doctors from reporting COVID-related deaths. Second, you only count those cases when people die in hospitals. In China's COVID-19 data pipeline, there are some seemingly obvious information drop-offs. Until now, China has only counted fatalities in which a scan showed lung damage caused by the virus. So the death wasn't counted if COVID-19 was only a contributing factor. Unlike China's method, the World Health Organization's guideline says deaths in which COVID-19 is a contributing cause must be counted. No country in the world is changing the definition of COVID-19 deaths. It's set by the WHO, followed by all countries. Those excluded in China's data could be a sizable group. As The Economist noted, the virus of COVID-19 elevates deaths of those with other illnesses at alarming rates. Additionally, China's death tally only includes patients who died while in hospitals and who tested for COVID-19. The 60,000 figure means, on average, only six people died of COVID-19 for every 100 hospitals and medical facilities during the peak of the surge. What about the rest? Like those who died at home and those among the half-billion people in China's rural areas who lack easy access to healthcare facilities? But even those who died in hospitals may not have been certified as COVID-19 deaths. In this video, a patient in Shanghai asked a doctor for a COVID-19 diagnosis certificate. Do you need a CT scan for pneumonia? If you do, we won't give you a diagnosis. In the case of China, the physicians, the doctors at hospitals, when they have to certify a death certificate, if someone had COVID but they also had diabetes, they're reported as having died of something other than COVID. Of course, it's asking them to lie. As of February 23rd, the total official COVID-19 deaths in China since 2019 count up to just over 88,000. 94% of the death toll occurred between last December and this February, about three months. Our investigation to even access that official death toll was clouded by a fog of skewed data. China's National Health Commission suddenly stopped publishing daily COVID-19 infections and deaths near the end of last year. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was still publishing data until earlier this year. Since January, China has reported COVID-19 deaths only a handful of times. In December, the official death count even had one struck off. And on one occasion, data from China's CDC and National Health Commission reflected a near 20-fold discrepancy for COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. China also has no rolling mechanism to smooth daily fluctuations. Although death rates are charted according to official figures and weekly reports, no specific numbers are given. Without officials providing reliable data, we delved into frontline reports, online postings, statistic models, and spoke to experts from different areas to find out the true toll of China's COVID-19 pandemic. But before we get into that, perhaps you are wondering, why should we even care? The virus came out of China. There's nothing unusual about that. Wuhan, Hubei Province, the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic and the only COVID-19 hotspot in China in 2019. Yet the city's death count was adjusted at the very beginning of the outbreak. By April 2020, the original COVID-19 death toll in the city was set at about 2,500. Then a day later, officials added another 1,000 deaths, said to be the result of failures by hospitals to report numbers correctly. That brought the Wuhan death count up to less than 4,000, where it still stands today. Outside of the city, another 600 deaths were reported in Hubei Province. Beyond Hubei Province, there have been just over 100 COVID-19 deaths reported in all of China over three years, a total of less than 5,000. If that data is to be believed, how did the virus not spread throughout the rest of China? The critical issue is the lack of transparency, consistent lack of transparency. This is a threat to the whole world. A 2021 study by the British Medical Journal found an eight-fold increase in pneumonia deaths in Wuhan compared to the same period in 2019. That's nearly 6,000 more deaths and nearly three-fifths of them were not attributed to COVID-19 in the original official count. In May 2021, the economist reanalyzed the same data. That investigation found that the total excess deaths in Wuhan reached more than 13,000. That's triple China's official count and double the British report's estimate. So for these models, disease prediction model is always garbage in, garbage out. If you cannot get the real data from China, all your estimations will be way off. According to a professor at Johns Hopkins University, people are hungry for data, good data, as he worries that there might be too many models out there. Only when people have the correct information can they make correct judgments. It's very important for us to keep on the, you know, to be on the same page, you know, exchange the critical value information so people can take corresponding actions. With good data, researchers can predict how many people will likely get infected with the virus. Governments can implement countermeasures and policies. Health organizations can better understand patients' needs. And the Chinese people can stay informed about the true scale of the calamity descending on their country. That is what China has not allowed to happen from really the first outbreak right on through to today. The destruction of data, the hiding of information, the suppression of reports of all sorts. All of that has put a big cloud of uncertainty over this very critical part of the epidemiological chain. During the earlier pandemic, Time magazine interviewed many sickened Wuhan residents and relatives of presumed COVID-19 victims. They were never included on official death or infection tallies. And just like how China defied WHO guidelines on how to define a COVID-19 death, since the outbreak China has changed what constitutes a COVID-19 infection in its official statistics at least eight times. It wasn't until the end of March 2020 that Beijing finally included asymptomatic infections in its official reports. In 2020, a U.S. study led by Dr. Mei He on the official outbreak in China's Wuhan estimated 36,000 could have died at the time ten times the official figure. People die 1,000 people it's different than the impact of 10,000 people right? Or even higher. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had earlier told CNBC that Beijing's actions have set America's prevention efforts back. And the information that we got at the front end of this thing is the place where much of the challenge we face today. That is if the CCP didn't lie the loss would be greatly reduced. A study by the British University of Southampton found 95% of COVID-19's global spread could have been reduced if China had come clean with the initial Wuhan outbreak and intervened earlier. It's a big deal if China underreported Wuhan's First, that Chinese authorities knew that COVID-19 deaths were much higher than reported. Second, that other COVID-19 deaths in China may have been excluded or incorrectly attributed to other causes. About the 1st of April 2020 the Chinese statistics just shut down COVID reporting COVID mortality reporting In 2020 COVID-19 was raging in Wuhan with an unusually high case fatality rate over four times higher than the rest of the world's. On April 17th 2020 official COVID-19 mortality figures in mainland China dropped to zero until next year's January. The official 0.0% case fatality rate of the virus has been eliminated. During these periods China officially reported a total of over 270,000 COVID-19 cases without a single death attributed to the disease. Any figures that are coming out of the official Chinese channels these days are just to be heard. According to the official death rates Calhoun has taken an approach called excess mortality. It basically compares current levels of COVID-19 impacted mortality with past trends to reveal the surplus deaths over the normal baseline. According to United Nations Global Health Organization the sharp inflection since 2019 added about a million surplus deaths above the trend line. There was some kind of public health crisis that added at least one million excess deaths in 2020 I think COVID is probably at the top of the list for answering that question. In 2021 the official figure of China's COVID-19 deaths was just over 5,000. In other words China reported less than 1,000 deaths. So how many people actually died? All the indications suggest that it's going to be in the millions of COVID deaths. According to CEIC data crematorium industry shows a steady decline in COVID-19. The number of crematoria increased by more than 10 percent in 2021. And over 600 additional furnaces were built to meet the surging demand. But keep in mind that these figures are just based on the official data that was collected by the Department Head of a Swiss Drug Corporation. She shared a shocking video with us, received from an insider contact in China early in January. The video captured corpses scattered on a city street. As we can see in the video, the street is full of corpses piled up, those we can see. There's also this temporary small tent, although we can't see what's inside. This video struck me because this is just a small to medium sized city. What is it like in big cities? In December and January, these two months, the number of people who died is the same as for a whole year. So how many deaths are there really? A prominent Chinese intellectual with a master's degree from Harvard disclosed the following information on Twitter Every crematorium is basically five to ten times more crowded than usual. China's death toll is about 10 million per year. The number of people who die every year is about 50 to 10 million per year. There is a large backlog of unfinished bodies. So we estimate 10 million to 20 million deaths as the total number which is fairly conservative. Nearly 160 million more people live in rural China than in the entire U.S. And virtually all of these people were poorly prepared for the virus wave. China's official vaccination program in China is fully vaccinated. Earlier in 2022 vaccination efforts in China came to a halt as resources were redirected towards zero COVID-19 policy testing programs. So far one third of the population in China has been vaccinated. The highly vulnerable segment comprises over 300 million people. While under China's abrupt transition from a state of absolute zero COVID-19 a form of isolation to death. But even those vaccinated received doses that only protect against the virus's original strain. That's because Chinese vaccines were developed based on earlier variants. They are considered ineffective against COVID-19 and are limited by a ratio between our brain size and group size. Using the rule of 150 we can also estimate how tragic the situation is in terms of death. If 11.33 percent is supplied to the entire country then there are actually over 100 million deaths correct? Of course deaths are unevenly distributed however it can partially be predicted. A number of places have reported that multiple families in a village are holding funerals on the same day and there are such families in a village every day. There are many cases of death at the same time. There are other practices in China that will likely increase the death total. Due to surging demand crematoria have reportedly been placing more deaths in China than in the U.S. To calculate a more accurate picture of the COVID-19 pandemic's toll in China Dr. Dong used an equation based on the official number of cremation furnaces per day per furnace by the total number of cremation furnaces and the number of days per year. Her total estimate lands around 58 million cremations in 2020 alone. In 2020 China Then we came back to make an overall estimate which is around 380 million. Dong's model estimates the number of COVID-19 deaths in China from 2020 to 2022 Dong says her research aims to raise awareness about COVID-19 in China. Her work is driven by the implausible mortality rates being reported by Chinese authorities during the pandemic. If we're talking about a country imagine that hundreds of millions of people have died in China. In January Beijing and at least nine other cities stopped publishing quarterly cremation numbers for the end of 2022. I don't think that they could there be an explanation. But in the case of India you're looking at a similar situation to China where there was I think in China there was clearly an active decision after April of 2020 There is an intention on the part of the government in China to conceal the information to misrepresent the extent of the impact. One argument for Beijing's data suppression to sustain was in 2019. He called it a people's war or the nation's struggle to defeat an invisible enemy. Human power can win the battle against the virus and this is totally fitting China has the highest death rate of any major country worldwide. A COVID-19 mortality rate nearly 60 times lower than the U.S. And 11 times lower than Korea's 9 times lower than China's 4 times lower than is the U.S. And global population over 20 times lower than China's 1 40 times lower than the U.S. And China's 4 has actually stopped most COVID-19 deaths. Though not everyone bought the story, at the very least, low-to-zero official numbers have caused some disbelief about COVID-19 deaths in China. Survivorship bias, to put it bluntly, dead men can't talk. That marks the most challenging part of our investigation into China's COVID-19 death toll. During the ongoing pandemic, it has been difficult to find out what has happened to COVID-19 victims in China. They couldn't write books, make videos, or post online about what happened to them. In the case of those still living, their family members, their voices were suppressed by officials amid China's strict censorship. And that's why you can't feel the tragedy. The first is that the CCP blocked and covered up the death. Second, disasters occur on different scales, and they're not evenly distributed, so people feel it differently. For example, a now U.S. resident who lost multiple family members to Beijing's virus surge voices very different views on the outbreak. Within eight days, I lost five close relatives. He said his grandmother and uncle-in-law had tested positive for COVID-19 before they died, while his father, father-in-law, and uncle died of heart disease, asthma, and lung infection. None of them were entered into China's official COVID-19 death count. The Chinese government has been pushing out these lies in the public health data for decades. So they know how to fabricate the data. It's a long-standing practice in China's authoritarian one-party system. Officials set a target and force the facts to fit the number. There are too many such cases. In the past few decades, scholars in public health, epidemiology, and medicine, some of them have publicly accused the Chinese regime of covering up the facts. Over the last decades, Human Rights Watch has documented numerous instances of Beijing's censorship during other public health crises. In the 2000s, hundreds of thousands of children were poisoned by lead as China became known as the World's Factory in the 2000s. Parents and journalists looking for information about that problem were harassed. In 2004, China suppressed information about a series of blood-selling schemes. Reports estimated at least one million people got HIV from state-sponsored unsanitary blood-for-money programs. In 2008, Chinese media were banned from reporting on infants being poisoned by toxin-laced milk powder formula. Around 300,000 children were sickened, and six died due to the poisoned milk. In 2018, Chinese authorities detained journalists, activists, lawyers, and families of vaccine victims for exposing China's faulty vaccine problems. Critiques posted online were also censored. Once you tell a lie, you may have to tell more lies to cover it up. If you don't do that, people will know it's a lie, and they won't believe you again. If the regime loses the hearts of the people, it will lose its rule, so it can only keep lying and using its previous means. One of the biggest tragedies of modern history highlights this mindset, the famine that occurred between 1958 and 1962 in China. The most shocking part wasn't the death total, but that for over two decades, no one was sure whether it had even taken place. The Great Leap Forward led to three years of famine. Approximately at least 30 to 40 million people in the country starved to death at that time. At least 30 million people starved to death, a conclusion by American demographers in the mid-1980s. Even though so many people died of starvation, big cities like Beijing and Shanghai still have a lot of traffic on their streets. The information was very limited. That's because during that time, anyone who admitted there were food shortages were violently punished and declared enemies of socialism. Even today, there are still many missing pieces. In one instance, there is evidence that the Communist Party produced different versions of the same report, and lower-ranking officials were given lower figures. It left Chinese authorities to believe that controlling the past is the key to the regime's future. So what about this time? How much damage did the COVID-19 cataclysm have on China? Who was to blame? How long will Beijing keep the true numbers secret? And will the actual death toll exceed expectations? Perhaps a more important question is, can the Chinese Communist Party get away with it this time? Now, more and more people are prepared, including the WHO, has now retracted some of its positive statements in the early, early days and pointed out the ways in which China has not cooperated particularly well. If the CCP or officials disagree with our calculation of a 380 million COVID-19 death toll, they are very welcome to respond with real Chinese demographic data. I think people inside China, there will be someone who has the courage to save the data, the true data. According to Lin, Chinese authorities have reportedly ordered hospitals to sync their data with China's CDC and the Public Health Commission. That means the two databases are very different. It implies that China's hospital system may keep a true record of how many people die and are hospitalized due to COVID-19. The truth may not be the right time for them to come to the public at this moment. Lin urges any medical professional with a conscience in China to step forward and tell the world what happened. And if anyone is able to do it, they must act now. Thank you.