The world is reeling under Coronavirus scare right now, with the number of people getting infected and fatalities rising with each passing day -- within China and around the world. With salvation in the form of a vaccine still up in the air, some are wondering if secretive China is being totally honest to the world about Coronavirus' impact on Chinese lives.
An online Reddit forum that thinks China is under-reporting the total number of Coronavirus infections and deaths, and it's proving their point through a mathematical equation that's freakishly accurate thus far.
With the number of confirmed cases now at over 40,000 worldwide and the death toll at 910, China's Wuhan Coronavirus shows no signs of stopping just yet. It's also likely to jeopardize the year's biggest smartphone conference, Mobile World Congress, scheduled to happen in Barcelona in a couple of weeks.
Some of this fear and uncertainty around Coronavirus stems from China's authoritarian regime, and its tendency to propagate propaganda instead of facts to present a better image of its handling of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak within its borders.
But how does one go about proving that China's Coronavirus infection rate data -- which is being reported to the World Health Organization -- is in fact questionable at best and fake at worst? The answer may very well lie in a subforum on Reddit, which likes to call itself 'the front page of the internet.'
A Reddit user 'Antimonic' posted a thread in a subforum which tries to break down complex data in visual form through graphs and charts, and this user has come up with a mathematical equation based on number of Coronavirus infections and deaths reported by China to the WHO.
What's scary about Antimonic's equation -- which you can delve into here, if you're good at higher secondary math -- is that based on past data, he has made predictions about the future which are uncannily true.
Antimonic's equation from February 5 predicts the number of total cases reported by China to the WHO within the margin of error, which is just another way of saying with surprisingly close accuracy, following the principles of a mathematical model. The equation's prediction for three days -- February 7, 8 and 9 -- especially are quite amazing, take a look:
According to WHO, China had 31,211 cases and 637 Coronavirus deaths confirmed on February 7 -- for the same day, Reddit user's prediction was 30,576 cases and 639 deaths. For February 8, China reported 34,598 cases and 723 deaths -- Reddit's mathematical equation predicted 34,506 cases and 721 deaths. And for February 9, China had 37,251 cases and 812 deaths due to Coronavirus -- and our mathematical Nostradamus showed 38,675 cases and 808 deaths.
According to this conspiracy theory-backed by a mathematical logic, Antimonic's data is showing a predictable growth in Coronavirus infections and deaths -- almost too easy to predict, in fact, since it seems to be following a graph.
Another Reddit user called Rockchurch summed up the discrepancy in the Chinese data quite well to a fellow Reddit user who had trouble understanding the magnitude of the mathematical graph: "A relatively serious disease with fairly good containment COULD fit that curve over the long-haul, but would have a TON more noise and variation (spikes and plateaus) as logistical and medical countermeasures ramp up. The released figures don’t have these natural variations. So they are QUITE suspicious," said Rockchurch.
Apart from this Reddit speculation, there are two other things that call into question China's data on Coronavirus: Well before World Health Organization or US Center For Disease Control made it official that a deadly Coronavirus outbreak had gripped China, and posed danger to the whole world, a Canada-based AI startup knew that the 'Wuhan virus' cases were multiplying in China as early as December 31.
Also China’s second-largest conglomerate, Tencent accidentally displayed figures for the Coronavirus on a Chinese website over a week ago, which showed over 154,023 people were infected by the virus and over 24,589 actually dead -- which is several times more than what the official Chinese state media has reported till now.
What do you think? Is China really hiding something about the real scenario concerning Coronavirus outbreak within its border? Let us know in the comments below.