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  • 2020-05-03 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the CDC Significantly 'Readjust COVID-19 Death Numbers'? (en)
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  • At the beginning of May 2020, widely circulated social media posts asserted that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had substantially revised their figures for the number of deaths in the U.S. caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus disease, from 60,000 down to about 37,000: These posts fed into conspiracy theories holding that the COVID-19 pandemic was not nearly as serious as suggested by the government and the news media, and that the true mortality figures were being deceptively inflated to achieve some ulterior purpose. However, this claim was not true, and it was the result of comparing two separate data sources that report different measurements. The link included in the above tweet points to the CDC's Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) page, which provides provisional death totals by week and state according to the following criteria: As of May 1, 2020, that page reported the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. as being 37,308: However, that page also notes that the provisional data it displays are continually revised, may be incomplete, likely will not include more recent deaths, and may differ from other published sources because data currently are lagged by an average of 1–2 weeks: That 37,308 was not a drastic downward revision of any previously reported death total. Rather, it only might have seemed such because it was mistakenly compared to the number of deaths reported on the CDC's COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. page, which as of May 3, 2020, displayed a total of 65,735 deaths: Why such a large discrepancy? Because as latter page's About the Data section explains, its data are updated daily based on Case notifications received by CDC from U.S. public health jurisdictions and the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) and includes both confirmed and probable deaths. This more up-to-date page will obviously report higher death figures that one whose data lag by 1-2 weeks. Indeed, two weeks earlier, the Cases in the U.S. page had displayed a total of 35,443 deaths, a number much closer to the 37,308 figure reported by the Provisional Death Counts with its 1-2 week data lag. In short, this claim is like comparing stock prices from a two-week-old newspaper with those offered today by a cable news station, and then attributing any differences to a conspiracy rather than the mere passage of time as reflected in more current reporting. (en)
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