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On the day that doctors and nurses in New York City treated over 1,500 new COVID-19 patients, conservative pundit Candace Owens claimed that deaths from the pandemic coronavirus have been inflated.
“Apparently, doctors and nurses around the world are wondering why no one is dying from heart attacks or strokes any more, Owens tweeted April 6. “Flu and pneumonia deaths also went off a cliff. Turns out everyone is only dying of coronavirus now. Gee, I wonder why.”
An exaggerated death count is a persistent talking point. On April 4, Owens tweeted “State departments of Public Health are reporting the number of deaths BEFORE the medical examiners have even concluded the cause of death,” she said. “There would be no legitimate way to report how many people die daily.”
Are Owens’ claims correct? We asked her for evidence but did not hear back. What we found is that her statement is at odds with doctors, who say the data, in fact, reflects an undercount.
Here’s why the details of death reporting back up the doctors more than the pundits.
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Alex Mahadevan is a senior multimedia reporter at MediaWise. He can be reached at amahadevan@poynter.org or on Twitter at @AlexMahadevan. Follow MediaWise on TikTok.
