The CDC Did Not Revise Down The Number Of COVID-19 Deaths

Several tweets went viral that falsely accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of drastically revising down the number of COVID-19 deaths in the US, inflaming conspiracy theories that the coronavirus is not as serious as officials claim, Buzz Feed reports.

As of yesterday, the CDC said that more than 64,000 people have died in the US, but the false tweets accused them of quietly cutting that figure in half.

The most prominent tweet came from media personality Tim Young. Young linked to a provisional count of COVID-19 deaths from the National Vital Statistics System, an inter-governmental system which tracks births and deaths in the US and which on Friday night put the figure close to 37,000.

Many responses to Young’s tweet accused the media of a conspiracy in ignoring the “true” death toll count.

But the table Young links to clearly states that data only covers the period from Feb. 1 to April 25.

Moreover, the National Vital Statistics System website makes clear that it has a significant lag in counting deaths because it relies on tabulating official death certificates it receives.

“It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated,” reads a prominent disclaimer above the data. “Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods.”

“Data during this period are incomplete because of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes,” reads another footnote.

In comparison, the CDC’s actual most up-to-date count of COVID-19 deaths is on a separate site and shows more than 64,000 people have died in the US. Read more at Buzz Feed.

{Matzav.com}