There were fake people posing as dead people, I saw videos proving this early on when most the west wasnt paying attention to china news. Keep in mind tho people dont understand there is no health insurance in china, if you get sick and cant pay they kill you or charge your family (which might not be able to pay) or put you in prison. So people didnt go to the hospital and just walked around until they died on the street or behind the wheel of a car from the illness. The amount of people that live in close spaces with each other in China is crazy and we don't know if the early viruses let out in China were perhaps worse than what was spread in other countries.