Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, dispelled reports that the number of deaths resulting from the virus could be inflated.
There has been speculation that the number of deaths associated with the pandemic could be too high if it included people who died with the virus but didn’t die because of it.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked if there was any validity in those reports during a Thursday morning appearance on NBC’s Today.
“You know, Savannah, there is absolutely no evidence that that’s the case at all,” Fauci explained. “I think it falls under the category of something that’s very unfortunate, these conspiracy theories that we hear about. Every time we have a crisis of any sort, there’s always this popping up of conspiracy theories. I think the deaths that we’re seeing are coronavirus deaths, and the other deaths are not being counted as coronavirus deaths.”
Several Fox News personalities have brought up the theory that deaths are inflated as a result of including anyone who died with the virus, rather than just counting those whose cause of death was the coronavirus. Fox News prime-time anchor Tucker Carlson discussed the topic in a segment on his show Wednesday night with network contributor Brit Hume.
Carlson cited weekly data on pneumonia-related deaths from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and labeled the drop in deaths as suspicious, speculating that the decline could be a result of some of those deaths being classified as ones caused by COVID-19.
“For the last few weeks, that [pneumonia] number has come in far lower than at the same moment in previous years. How could that be?” Carlson asked. “Well, it seems entirely possible that doctors are classifying conventional pneumonia deaths as COVID-19 deaths. That would mean this epidemic is being credited for thousands of deaths that would have occurred if the virus never appeared here.”
Hume reiterated Carlson’s perspective saying, “Particularly, there are lots of people who are asymptomatic, and they have other terrible diseases,” and he later added, “And if everybody is being automatically classified, if they’re found to have COVID-19, as a COVID-19 death, we’re going to get a very large number of deaths that way, and we’re probably not going to have an accurate count of what the real death total is.”
Earlier in the day, network host Harris Faulkner also speculated that the death toll could include people who didn’t die of the virus.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force response coordinator, also addressed the speculative claim that the death toll is inflated during Wednesday’s press briefing.
“Those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when it’s related to a [COVID-19] infection,” Birx said. “In fact, it’s the opposite.”
