It is real, but the response is a hoax.
Apparently many many more people have been exposed, infected, and developed antibodies. Most without developing any severe symptoms, many apparently without even knowing it had occurred. This means the mortality rate is a mere fraction of what it was initially estimated/reported.
The mortality rate is further reduced if you stop counting all the deaths from other causes. I'm 100% certain that if I got on my motorcycle today and was involved in a fatal crash they'd say "well, maybe he had CV and it caused a fever and loss of perspective or balance. Based on that assumption alone let's mark him as a CV death, we'll get reimbursed more from the government/insurance..."
We know there are incentives to merely assume infections and causality. We know deaths attributed to other typical causes such as pneumonia and heart disease are down. We are counting far too many deaths as CV. Go to https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/ and look at the curve for the US. Now why do you think the US is showing so many apparent deaths from CV, and why our numbers haven't fallen off like they have in virtually every other Country being tracked? Probably, almost certainly because they are being held high artificially due to poor guidance and a desire by many to keep the numbers high.