Bodies of the dead. According to an unconfirmed report of allegedly leaked statistics surrounding the novel Coronavirus outbreak in China, there are more than 154,000 confirmed cases of the disease and of those, more than 24,000 have died in a worsening epidemic that has 100-million Chinese citizens on lockdown.

Despite being shut down twice, a Chinese news website purportedly published actual case data from a screenshot from Beijing’s health ministry showing figures regarding the ongoing outbreak that far exceed official Chinese government statistics that most observers have dismissed as obvious propaganda by an authoritarian Beijing government desperate to conceal the true magnitude of the coronavirus crisis. It’s believed the Beijing government accidentally linked to an accurate index of internal figures regarding the plague and published the raw data prior to revision for public view.

A leaked screenshot from the now censored report shows figures from February 1st and 2nd indicating 154,023 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus, 79,808 suspected cases, 269 recovering or “cured” survivors and 24,589 fatalities from the disease.

Another photo shows a man being taken into custody, allegedly for having pictures on his cellphone that may have constituted evidence of the true scope of the outbreak.

In pondering the authenticity of the numbers, it’s worth noting that the reported ratio between total infections and fatalities calculates to a 16% lethality rate, nearly precisely in keeping with findings published last week by Britain’s premiere medical journal, The Lancet, which produced the very first scholarly medical study of the outbreak.  The Lancet study found a 15% lethality rate and a transmissibility rate of 83%, meaning that of every 100 people exposed to the disease,  83 will become infected and of those, 13 will die, numbers that predict that for every 100 people exposed to the pathogen, 13% will succumb.

Adding to the mystery are published photos showing Wuhan as a virtual ghost city shrouded in thick smog, even as public transportation, automobiles, factories and other emissions producing centers have been halted due to lockdown and quarantine of the population. The persistent smoke in the air has led to speculation of mass cremations as succumbing victims bodies are incinerated, both in an effort to contain the virus and to hide the truth of the pandemic’s magnitude from the world.