The Chinese were lying.late Summer early fall of 2019 they new something was going on.
Originally Posted by texassapper
I think what you meant to say is the
Chinese government was lying. I'm continually telling people I know that you should not confuse the CCP government with the Chinese people in general. They are not the same thing.
My first reaction was, I'm skeptical of this study. The main reason is that personal vehicle ownership in China is very low. Most people in the major cities take public transportation, so I'm not sure the number of cars in the hospital parking lots really correlates. Another point is, I'm not sure how much you can infer from Baidu search statistics. However, I'll reserve final judgment until I read the paper. I've downloaded it, and my first impression is that it's rather thin for a scientific paper, but I haven't read in detail yet. It's also a pre-publication that hasn't been through peer review yet.
On a side note, the article you cite is surprisingly well written. Usually popular press reviewing a scientific article does a terrible job and gets most of the relevant details wrong. This one seems half-way decent, which is way above average.