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.
Would that be the Crossfire Hurricane bunch? Brennan's butt buddies?
Probably not.
Non Vintage Bookmark.
Ping
This is not a fact check this is a push of CCP propaganda
Do you really believe U.S. Intel leaks classified reports to bottom ranked websites, where at the time of this post most of its web traffic is from Ghana?
This is a case of a fake story making the rounds on the fringe of the Internet, changing a little each time.
I agree. That is far more believable. These people were probably “spreading disinformation” and had their phones cancelled, and they have been rounded up for re-education, or will be.
Excellent point.
+.
+.
I would cut back while a lockdown was going on.
IMO, that's a realistic number of delinquencies in monthly payment charges.
Derek Scissors at AEI used China’s own numbers of Wuhan and Hubei province exits in Dec/Jan to calculate 2.9mm cases — at the low end — and 136,000 deaths.
Here for the FR thread: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3835944/posts
Here for the original paper: https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/estimating-the-true-number-of-chinas-covid-19-cases/
136k deaths I can believe. More than 2MM deaths? Unlikely.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.