There has been a lot of political bickering over the effects of the deadly COVID-19 virus. While such a thing is hardly a matter to argue over, some have said that the CDC has been revising down the number of person who have died of the pandemic. However, as Buzz Feed News reports, this is not true, and that it seems to be a hoax that is being promoted among right-leaning circles.
Several tweets went viral on Saturday 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.
As of Saturday, the CDC says 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 right-wing 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. (source)
It is true that Buzz Feed is on the political left. However, this does not mean they cannot speak truth, and the same goes for the right about the left.
The fact is that COVID-19 is serious, and while there are many questions, a lot of people have died from it, and unfortunately there are many unverified, unproveable, and highly questionable theories about it that are emerging from right-leaning groups. This is a fact that is easily visible through the tweets and online discourse that all can see.
It is one thing if there are conspiracies, for they are real. It is another thing if one can prove them with names, places, dates, times and other forms of evidence, which is what is lacking here. There is a lack of substantial evidence for many claims that only makes them more questionable. It is the difference between saying, for example, “the Jews control the banks and tried to destroy Europe” with no evidence versus, as Shoebat.com has reported on before, that there was a Jewish-owned bank in France, called the Stein Bank, which emerged immediately after Napoleon legalized Jews to own banks, which worked with a major Jewish financier, Paul Warburg, to funnel money to the National Socialist party in Germany and in doing so bankrolled the rise of the National Socialist and Hitler into power during the 1930s. The former is just allegations without evidence, the latter is providing names, places, times, dates, and specific evidence to detail a claim so that the full picture of what is happening can be understood.
Are there legitimate claims about COVID-19? Most likely there are. However, those claims are only as valid as the evidence used to support them, and anything else, in a polarized, manipulated, politicized world, must be regarded with healthy skepticism until evidence to the contrary can be put forward in a clear, organized, simple way to support any possible theory.