Posted on 04/18/2020 4:45:28 PM PDT by Widget Jr
Did new intelligence data reveal that 21 million people died in China from December 2019 to March 2020 due to the novel coronavirus? No, that's not true: An online article being shared uses a statistic about a drop in cellphone users to make a faulty supposition that this figure reflects COVID-19 deaths in China. These numbers are not correlated, fact checkers have previously shown.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by News NT on April 4, 2020, under the headline "21 million Chinese died of coronavirus - US intelligence officials intercept data." It opened:
"A new data intercepted by the United States reveals that 21 million people died in China from December 2019 to March 2020, US intelligence officials conclude in a classified report for the Trump administration."
"The Intelligence report stated that at least 20.9 million of the deaths were linked to coronavirus."
"According to the US, the intercepted data that shows that China underreported its coronavirus infections and deaths was validated for a second time when it tallied with a data released by Beijing authorities. Beijing announced on March 19 that over 21 million cellphone accounts in China were canceled in the past three months while 840,000 landlines were closed."
"China had reported little over 81,000 infections with 3,300 deaths."
Even though the original link for the report is down, the archived item has gone viral. On April 13, 2020, the site republished the story using a different URL.
The article has also been copied word-for-word by other sites, including one that only changed the name of the "author" from James Alami to Alavi.
The original story mentioned that an intelligence report concluded that China has deliberately underreported the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country. While it's true that a new report does suggest China's official figures are false, the News NT story incorrectly linked that reporting to a separate one about cellphone cancellations.
The result is a sweeping assumption that misinterpreted why millions of cellphones were canceled.
...
News NT is a relatively new player online; its domain name was only registered a month ago. A subheadline written in Vietnamese in the republished English-language article suggests the site originates from that Southeast Asian country.
Lead Stories reviewed its content and noticed a mix of real and fake stories. For example, there's an article that stated the Thai king has tested positive for coronavirus in Germany. It's true he was self-quarantining in Germany, but there is no reporting that he had come down with the new coronavirus.
Now don’t go making sense and confusing some :)
They have experience in hiding lots of bodies.
if there were 21m dead you’d smell it from here.
It seems to have been developed to discredit conservative sources.
It has a lot of former CNN people in it.
What could be the terminus of such a low trajectory!
It is a habit.
Hard to break.
Of course the CCP could hide 20+ million deaths. That is less than 0.1% of the population. That is a lower death rate than any reported anywhere in the world.
He11.
I do not wish it on him.
Now I believe it.
Laowhy has been digging into the Wuhan virus laboratory by translating laboratory job postings from Nov/Dec 2019. However, nothing he uncovered supports the 21 million dead Chinese story, which has its origins in the January drop off in subscribers to China's largest mobile carrier.
"Anti-corruption" measures.
There was a very large number of "ghost subscribers" getting subsidized phone service. Somebody on the losing end of a factional dispute was no longer allowed to skim off the top of those subscriptions.
They terminated the subscriptions, and probably also the members of the faction that were diverting the subsidies.
Well, you wanted another explanation...
This story is still fake. It does not matter to me who explains why.
About 21 million guys who had 5 cell phones decided to cut back a little to cut costs?
But, but, but. What about all the unused cell phones?
They have ‘rumor’ laws meaning people shouldn’t ‘gossip’ online. At the same time the Chinese are loving conspiracy theories and in a combination with such a crisis I’d suspect it produced a great deal of ‘gossip’. The cancelation of 21 millions accounts clearly indicates blocking these thought criminals from the internet.
I agree with you. The researches who first studies the cellphone stats from China concluded that the plausible # of COVID-19 dead found therein was between 600k and 1.6MM.
No way do I believe it’s higher than 2MM, just because of the difficulty of disposing of that many bodies without the world seeing it.
There must be a better explanation of the cell phone issue.
+++++
It is amazing to me how the whole cell phone Coronavirus death supposed connection has been missed by the Freepers.
I agree with you that counting cell phone cancelations to estimate Chinese deaths is just nuts.
Oh, please. Videos can be fake. 21 million dead. That’s a lot of streets. I call panic-inducing BS.
Oh, please. Videos can be fake. 21 million dead. That’s a lot of streets. I call panic-inducing BS.
Personally, I’d take the 21 million as an extreme upper limit as it centers on a singular stat of cell-phone accounts dropped. The PRC (China) came to an almost complete stop in December to February and if the system did support multiple accounts per individual, you can have a large overhang on that statistic.
However, the current PRC ‘Official’ count of 4,632 is ludicrous at the low end. On-street reports and satellite views indicate mass cremations and with the ABRUPT cessation of reported PRC deaths at the end of March, the credibility there is zilch.
As the origin site and with the need to ramp up treatment and given how the World is averaging 299 cases (not deaths) per million while PRC has 57, they are just plain doing the CYA Shuffle. Does them no harm to lie as, to echo a former US Secretary of State, “What difference at this point does it make?”
They should go back into their closet with their Binky and tremble uncontrollably . Leave the rest of us alone .
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