‘Scientifically unsound’: Disturbing evidence shows officials are hiding and deflating COVID-19 stats to build the case for ‘opening up’

The United States passed a grim milestone this week when researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported that the country’s coronavirus death count had reached 100,000. But the number of COVID-19 fatalities and infections, many experts believe, is even worse than what is being reported. And journalists Darius Tahir and Adam Cancryn, in Politico, report that the number of deaths and new infections is being “deflated” at a time when President Donald Trump is pushing for states to reopen their economies sooner rather than later.

“Federal and state officials across the country have altered or hidden public health data crucial to tracking the coronavirus’ spread, hindering the ability to detect a surge of infections as President Donald Trump pushes the nation to reopen rapidly,” according to Tahir and Cancryn. “In at least a dozen states, health departments have inflated testing numbers or deflated death tallies by changing criteria for who counts as a coronavirus victim and what counts as a coronavirus test.”

The Politico journalists cite Arizona as an example of one of the states that has “shifted the metrics for a ‘safe’ reopening.” Arizona, according to Tahir and Cancryn, “sought to clamp down on bad news at one point by simply shuttering its pandemic modeling.” Continue reading.