Hello Darth,
Knowledge could lead to that.
The knowledge that the confirmed cases are automatically a far lower figure than the actual cases, for several reasons:
1. People with mild symptoms are not getting tested - that's most people.
2. The incubation period automatically means that whatever has been confirmed is old news, that the virus has gone further than that by the time symptoms begin to appear.
3. By the time one death has been reported, since it takes a period of time between when the disease is contracted, and manifested in a vulnerable individual to the point of death, beyond the incubation period, many more people have contracted the virus but they are not confirmed, and often do not even know they have the disease. For every death, it can always be extrapolated that X number of cases already exist.
4. The number of cases doubles every 6 days.
5. People can have the disease and not even know they have it. Symptoms will be very mild, actually, for most people.
Or one could simply ignore all this knowledge and pretend that all which can be known about the disease is the current death figure.