It’s another black eye for CNN.
Russia’s coronavirus death toll is more than three times higher than what the country had previously reported, Russian officials admitted Monday.
An estimated 186,000 Russians have died so far from the viral outbreak, meaning the country now has the third-highest death toll in the world, behind the United States and Brazil (and almost certainly China, which continues to lie about the severity of the effect that the virus has had on its people).
The wildly revised death toll comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged for months that his country’s supposedly low fatality rate stood as a testament to his leadership capabilities versus that of Western countries.
The revision also comes after a demographer who left Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) this summer alleged in an interview this month with Agence France-Presse that the Russian health ministry and the consumer health ministry have been cooking the country’s coronavirus data.
As it turns out, Putin and his administration may have played fast and loose with the truth.
Shocker, I know.
But what does any of this have to do with CNN? Easy. In March, the U.S. cable network reported uncritically that Russia’s efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak appeared largely successful. CNN’s reporting was based on data provided by Russian state agencies. You would think that the same U.S. network that went hard into the paint covering the busted collusion dud would know by now not to trust Russian state operatives, especially when the numbers benefit Putin most, but you’d be wrong!
CNN’s coverage never warned readers that the data might have been falsified. CNN’s coverage never even entertained the notion that the state-provided figures may have been cooked to make it appear as if Putin was in control. The coverage chose instead to place all reasonable skepticism on the shoulders of anonymous Russian citizens and a doctor who CNN described merely as an “opposition figure.”
But Russian officials themselves say now that their death toll is much, much worse than previously reported.
“Since early in the pandemic, some Russian experts have said the government was playing down the country’s outbreak,” the Guardian reported this week.
It adds, “On Monday, Russian officials admitted that was true. The Rosstat statistics agency said that the number of deaths from all causes recorded between January and November had risen by 229,700 compared with the previous year.”
Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova added elsewhere, “More than 81% of this increase in mortality over this period is due to Covid.” This means that more than 186,000 Russians have died from the viral outbreak.
“Russian health officials have registered more than 3m infections since the start of the pandemic, putting the country’s caseload at fourth-highest in the world,” the Guardian report continues. “But they have only reported 55,265 deaths – a much lower fatality rate than in other badly hit countries.”
Putin, meanwhile, has resisted calls for tougher pandemic restrictions, including lockdowns.
“If we follow the rules and demands of health regulators, then we do not need any lockdowns,” he said this month during a press conference.
We were told early on by CNN that “information released by Russian officials” suggested “Putin’s strategy seems to have worked.” And now we’re told Russia has the third-highest death COVID-19 death toll in the world (not including China, which is probably in first place)?
Man, if you can’t trust Putin and his people, who can you trust?
