The scientific community, even within the People's Republic of China is not complicit in the cover-up by the Chinese communist party at the onset of this pandemic. It's not that things are worse or better than "they're saying", it's that things are more complex. The most common form of disinformation is any conclusion at all. There simply hasn't been enough data to draw enough solid epidemiological conclusions to answer even the most common questions. Those questions for example are: What is the reproductive rate (R0)? What is the fatality rate? What is the asymptomatic proportion? What proportion will become seriously ill and experience ARDS? This is a big part of the problem which leads to disinformation and panic.
So a scientific study indicated that the number of people who aren't confirmed but may be infected (note the tentative language) may be as high as almost half. So half of those infected get confirmed. That means you can cut the fatality rate in half, right there. There's another study showing how the fatality rate is calculated. Basically they said, count how many people got sick on a given day and then count how many died 14 days later since the incubation period is 14 days on average. The problem with that is that now that more data are emerging, it's been shown consistently that the average incubation period is only 8 days. This brings the fatality rate down again. Then a new study went on even further and stated that the fatality rate can not possibly be higher than the percentage of cases with an outcome in which the outcome was death, which right now means you can categorically reject any fatality rate above 7%.
However, that number is not mitigated by the asymptomatic proportion, so drop it by half, easy. Then, figure in doctor precation, not releasing patients until recovery has been 100% assured, and you realize that the number of recovered is probably also significantly higher and you actually end up accepting the WHO fatality rate estimate of around 2%. The fact that you can reach this number by doing the math in different ways, makes a very strong case. So no, it's exactly as bad as they're saying it is. Don't get me wrong, that's still bad. No need to make it any worse with disinfo.