Do you really believe China's claims??
Italy is probably more transparent, but still.
Good question. No, I don’t believe their claims for sure. I think any government is capable of concealing something in the name of what is best for national interests to prevent panic, protect national security, etc. I am not a conspiracy person, it is what history has shown over and over.
Actually, a perhaps bigger and more innocent problem is the quality of the data and so these league tables are likely not that accurate. The data is only as good as the methods of collection, definitions, etc. Modeling has a similar problem and if you go back to Ebola, some of the apocalyptic claims were no where even close. Now part of that was due to intervention, but modeling and reporting on something global like this is so complex because of the layers of assumptions you have to make and the number of fundamental flaws that can creep in.
What I take from this data is that this is a real disease that has come to pretty much every country in the world. Is the world ending? No for sure. But even a week ago I had friends that believed this was nothing and were in complete denial of how widespread this could get... I also have medical friends on the front line who have never seen what they are seeing as nothing like this has happened in their lifetimes. So as flawed as these data sets are for a variety of reasons, it becomes an indicator and catalyst which brings those two groups together so that we can focus all levels of society to tackle this.
This is not my field of study, but one thing seems clear that these are interesting times that sitting on the porch with a pipe is a good idea. Keep calm and smoke on!