Former Education undersecretary and 2019 senatorial aspirant Antonio “Butch” Valdes propagated an incorrect claim about the United States (U.S.) Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) “finally admitting” that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) death count in the U.S. is way less than was originally reported.
The claim, which first circulated abroad, was included in a Facebook (FB) post of Valdes calling President Rodrigo Duterte’s attention to the supposed “negligence and corrupt nature” of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.
STATEMENT
On Aug. 31, Valdes published an FB status update telling the president he was “duped” by Duque who “totally relied” on CDC pronouncements in his decision-making amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
To support this, Valdes said:
“The CDC-WHO has finally admitted that the number of deaths in the US is only 9000, and not 160000 as previously reported.”
Source: Butch Valdes official Facebook account, “Mr President , you have been duped by Sec Duque re the COVID-19 virus…,” Aug. 31, 2020
Valdes added that Duque “refused to consider other alternative sources” or conduct his own research to verify proposed COVID-19 treatment methods.
FACT
Neither CDC nor WHO has made such a revision in the COVID-19 death tally in the U.S.
The claim that there are only 9,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and not 160,000 is a wrong interpretation of CDC’s COVID-19 data.
Some FB posts, tweets, and an article by far-right news website The Gateway Pundit — all of which circulated as early as Aug. 29 in the U.S. — interpreted this figure incorrectly, saying CDC “quietly updated” its data to show that only six percent or around 9,000 of the over 153,000 recorded COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. as of Aug. 29 actually died from the disease.
The wrong claim, which was further amplified by U.S. President Donald Trump in a now-deleted retweet, said the remaining 94 percent had “other serious illnesses” and are of old age — insinuating that the deaths should not be attributed solely to the viral disease.
Jeff Lancashire, acting associate director for communications of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), confirmed in an email to Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact that 94 percent of the death certificates, in fact, cited other medical conditions — or comorbidities — alongside COVID-19.
However, he clarified that 92 percent of the deaths still have COVID-19 as their “underlying cause of death,” defined by Lancashire as “the condition that began the chain of events that ultimately led to the person’s death.”
Additionally, Bob Anderson, chief for Mortality Statistics of the NCHS, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP) that despite comorbidities, the death of a person who, for instance, had pneumonia caused by COVID-19, would be counted only once and recorded as a death due to COVID-19.
Anderson added that the six percent of mortality which has COVID-19 as its sole cause of death may be cases of death certificates containing insufficient detail on other conditions that COVID-19 could have possibly brought an individual.
He told AFP “it would be rare” that a person dies of COVID-19 alone.
For WHO’s part, the organization maintains that people who are above 60 years old and who have pre-existing medical conditions that affect their immune system are more at risk in experiencing a “more severe” case of COVID-19.
As of Sept. 14, the U.S. has already recorded around 6.5 million COVID-19 cases with over 193,700 deaths, according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker.
Valdes’ post came as the Philippine government continues to face criticisms over its pandemic response, with the most recent controversy being the P15 billion corruption mess, which revived calls for Duque’s resignation as Health Secretary.
