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Twitter removes QAnon supporter's claim about coronavirus stats that Trump had retweeted

WION Web Team
New York, New York, United States of AmericaUpdated: Aug 31, 2020, 09:53 AM IST
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Coronavirus in US (representative image). Photograph:(AFP)

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The CDC's latest regular update to a public statistics page on the pandemic said that for 6% of the deaths included in its statistics, "Covid-19 was the only cause mentioned" on the deceased person's death certificate.

Twitter has taken down a tweet containing a false claim about coronavirus death statistics that was made by a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory. This post had been retweeted by US President Donald Trump on Sunday.

The tweet has been replaced with a message saying, "This Tweet is no longer available because it violated the Twitter Rules. It was copied from someone else's Facebook post, and claimed that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had "quietly" updated its numbers "to admit that only 6%" of people listed as coronavirus deaths "actually died from Covid," since "the other 94% had 2-3 other serious illnesses."

But that is far away from the truth.

The CDC's latest regular update to a public statistics page on the pandemic said that for 6% of the deaths included in its statistics, "Covid-19 was the only cause mentioned" on the deceased person's death certificate.

That is not at all the same thing as saying only 6% of reported Covid-19 deaths "actually died" from Covid-19. It simply means that the other 94% were listed as having at least one additional factor contributing to their death.

People can live with obesity, diabetes or heart disease for years but then get infected with Covid-19 and die quickly. The fact that they also had an underlying condition does not mean that Covid-19 was not a major reason, or the major reason, they died when they did.

The CDC told CNN in July that Covid-19 will end up as a Top 10 cause of death for 2020. 

At least 182,885 people have died from coronavirus in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.