Spinning COVID At CNS

CNSNews.com spent much of 2020 trying its best to put a pro-Trump spin on coronavirus case and death numbers by attempting to downplay new surges of the virus.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 1/25/2021

Susan Jones

At the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, writers were achieving the same narrative in a different way, by cherry-picking numbers and making the current surge sound minor by comparing it to the pandemic's peak earlier this year.

CNS' attempt to spin numbers actually began shortly after the pandemic did. Patrick Goodenough wrote in a March 20 article: "A study by infectious disease experts at the University of Hong Kong and Harvard University found that the probability of dying after developing COVID-19 symptoms is about 1.4 percent – significantly lower than the 3.4 percent estimate cited by the World Health Organization in early March. The report comes as the number of deaths worldwide attributed to the novel coronavirus passed the 10,000 mark overnight."

Goodenough returned to downplay death rates in the U.S. in a March 30 article headlined "COVID-19 Deaths: Italy, 1 in 5,789 People; United States, 1 in 157,499." He began by complaining that "critics are trashing President Trump over the fact the U.S. is now reporting more confirmed COVID-19 cases than any other country,"then declared: "But numbers of confirmed cases are a function of testing. As testing in the U.S. has ramped up, it was only a matter of time before that testing would detect sizeable numbers of cases moving through the American population."

Of course, since this was very early in the pandemic, those numbers became obsolete almost immediately.

Goodenough again touted lower death estimates in an April 1 article: "Another academic study is estimating a significantly lower COVID-19 death rate than the 3.4 percent approximation cited by the World Health Organization in early March – an estimate which President Trump was roundly criticized for questioning."

Goodenough went on to complain that "critics pounced" on Trump when he called an earlier, higher death estimate a "false number," suggesting that Trump was correct to do so -- something totally on-brand for CNS.

Susan Jones did so in an April 6 article by using it to temper bad news:

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned on Sunday that this will be "the hardest and the saddest week" of our lives, as the death toll from coronavirus continues to climb above the current 9,600-plus.

"This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it's not going to be localized. It's going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that," Adams told "Fox News Sunday."

But then he offered some perspective on the death toll: "And more people will die, even in the worst projections, from cigarette smoking in this country than are going to die from coronavirus this year."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day."

The same day, Goodenough contributed another body-count article written to make the U.S. (and, thus, Trump) look good:

Of the 12 countries reporting the highest numbers of confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease COVID-19, the United States has the third-lowest fatality rate.

As of early Monday, 337,620 confirmed cases had been reported in the U.S., and a total of 9,616 deaths – a fatality rate of 2.84 percent.

That compares to a global fatality rate of 5.44 percent (a total of 1,275,542 confirmed cases worldwide, of which 69,498 have resulted in death).

Goodenough spun those death numbers further in an April 17 article:

Despite the grim and still-climbing COVID-19 death toll in the United States, of the 14 Western countries reporting the highest numbers of fatalities linked to the coronavirus disease, the U.S. remains on the lower end of the scale of death rates in proportion to the national population.

The U.S. on Thursday recorded the biggest single-day number of deaths – 4,591 in a 24-hour period ending at 8 PM Eastern Time – an 84 percent increase from the previous day’s then-record of 2,494, according to the real-time database of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

A pandemic is arguably not the best subject to be conducting horse-race coverage on. But that's how CNS rolls.

Summer surge spin

CNS cranked up the spin during the summer surge. Jones wrote in a July 7 article in the first of this series, under the headline "CDC: COVID-19 Deaths Peaked in Mid-April; Down 86% by Week Ending June 20":

The number of deaths involving COVID-19 in the United States peaked at 16,394 in the week ending on April 18, 2020, according to the provisional COVID-19 death counts published by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By the week ending on June 20, deaths involving COVID-19 had dropped to 2,287--a decline of 86 percent from the peak of 16,394.

[...]

The weekly COVID-involved death count, as reported by the CDC, has been steadily dropping since it hit its peak in mid-April, based on the numbers reported by NCHS.

While Jones led with those numbers, the last half of her article carried a bunch of caveats -- specifically, that the most recent numbers are not set in stone and are subject to revision; as she wrote, "CDC also noted that states report at different rates, although 63 percent of all U.S. deaths are reported within 10 days of the date of death."

Indeed, the CDC's number for COVID-19-related deaths for the week ending June 20 was ultimately 3,816 -- a more than 50 percent increase from the number Jones reported. That tells you that Jones' reporting here is politically driven to downplay the current surge.

Jones followed this with a July 14 article with the blaring headline "CDC: COVID-19 Deaths for Week Ending June 27 Down 91.9% From Mid-April Peak," going on to state that "In the week that ended on June 27, there were 1,363 deaths in the United States involving COVID-19, which was a 91.9 percent drop from the peak of 16,895 COVID-involved deaths reported for the week that ended on April 18." The CDC's death count for that week ended up being 3,800 -- nearly three times the number Jones reported.

On July 21, Jones touted under the headline "CDC: COVID Deaths for Week Ending July 4 Down 83% From Peak; Down 9% From Prior Week": "In the week that ended on July 4, 2,818 people in this country died from the COVID-19 virus, which is an 83.36 percent drop from the peak of 16,941 COVID-involved deaths reported for the week that ended on April 18." The final CDC number for that week is 4,498.

Jones did bow to reality a little in her July 27 article, conceding that numbers are going up and revising the previous week's numbers upward -- while still portraying that as below the April peak:

After falling for ten straight weeks, COVID-involved deaths in the United States began rising again during the week that ended on July 4 and continued to rise in the week that ended on July 11, according to data published by the CDC.

However, even with the rising number of deaths in those two weeks--as counted by death certificates submitted to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics--the number of COVID-involved deaths in the week ending July 11 was still 77.5 percent below the mid-April peak.

In the week ending July 4, 3,689 people died from COVID-involved illness, a 9 percent increase from the 3,384 who died in the week ending June 27.

In the week ending July 11, the provisional COVID death count was 3,814, a 3.4 percent increase over the week ending July 4.

But the 3,814 COVID-19-involved deaths in the week ending on July 11 was 77.5 percent below the peak of 16,970 in the week that ended on April 18.

The CDC is currently reporting that 5,735 people died in the week ending July 11.

Jones' Aug. 3 article read pretty much the same:

The most recent death certificates submitted to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that COVID-involved deaths in this country declined in the second half of July.

Based on CDC's preliminary data, 4,081 people died of COVID-involved disease in the week ending July 18. That is an 8.29 percent decrease from the 4,450 who died of COVID in the prior week. And it is 75.97 percent below the mid-April peak of 16,985 COVID-involved deaths.

Jones did concede in the third paragraph that "as CDC notes, data in recent weeks is more likely to be incomplete. The numbers change as more death certificates come in, but it now appears to be a declining trend for the second half of July."

It's in her employer's political interests that the "declining trend" be the narrative, even if future numbers say otherwise. And they didn't; the CDC's death count for that week is 7,132.

Jones' Aug. 11 body count was a little closer to reality but still labored to spin by including mid-April numbers for comparison:

As expected, the most recent death certificates submitted to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show at least three straight weeks of increased deaths involving the COVID-19 virus.

As CNSNews.com previously reported, deaths involving the virus started rising on July 4, following ten straight weeks of decline from the mid-April peak of 17,010.

In fact, contrary to her claim that CNS "previously reported" deaths were rising, her case-count article from the previous week claimed differently carrying the headline "CDC: COVID-Involved Deaths Drop 8.29% for Week Ending July 18." So much for that the "declining trend" narrative.

Jones repeated the formula for her Aug. 17 weekly update:

According to the latest death certificates submitted to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, deaths involving COVID-19 increased in all four weeks that ended in July. (Data for August are still too preliminary to be reliable.)

For the week ending July 25, at least 6,357 people died from COVID, a 2.53 percent increase from the 6,200 deaths in the week ending July 18, but 62.64 percent below the peak of 17,020 COVID-involved deaths for the week ending April 18.

At least Jones admitted up top that newer data "are still too preliminary to be reliable," an inconvenient fact she buried in previous articles.

For the following week, numbers looked better from her perspective, so it was back to full spin mode:

Deaths attributed to COVID-19 are once again trending down, based on preliminary death certificates submitted to the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the week ending August 1, the NCHS counted 6,356 COVID-involved deaths, a 10.94 percent decline from 7,137 deaths in the prior week and a 62.67 percent decline from the mid-April peak of 17,030 deaths.

This time, she added a plug for her favorite president, something she didn't do in the articles admitting that cases were up:

"We are doing an incredible job on the China virus, but I'm going to talk to about that Thursday night," President Trump said in his speech to the Republican National Convention on Monday. "Will anybody be listening on Thursday?" he joked.

By Aug. 31, Jones was back to fully downplaying things, under the headline "CDC: COVID-Involved Deaths in Mid-August Down 63% From April Peak." This time, she added: "The official COVID-involved death count does not distinguish between COVID-only deaths and deaths where COVID may have exacerbated an otherwise survivable underlying condition." The spin continued in Jones' Sept. 8 article:

COVID deaths for the week ending August 22 have returned to levels not seen since the end of June.

Based on death certificates submitted to the National Center for Health Statistics -- part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- 3,504 people died of "confirmed or presumed COVID-19," for the week ending August 22.

That is a 36.69 percent decrease from the 5,535 deaths recorded in the prior week, and a 79.43 percent drop from the mid-April peak of 17,039 COVID-involved deaths -- that is, deaths given the ICD-10 code of U07.1.

Jones did other COVID-related spinning in a July 17 article touting lower death counts among younger people:

Medical experts have long noted that the younger you are, the less likely you are to contract COVID-19 or suffer adverse symptoms, and the latest numbers posted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bear that out.

CDC's National Center for Health Statistics now reports a total of 188 COVID-involved deaths among people age 24 and younger -- or 0.154 percent of the total 121,374 COVID deaths reported to CDC from early February through the week ending July 11. The majority of students fall into this 24-and-under age group.

By contrast, a total of 97,459 people age 65 and older have died of COVID as of July 11 -- 80.29 percent of the total COVID-involved deaths.

Jones went on to uncritically promote arguments from President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence that this proves schools should reopen fully, while going on to complain that "teachers unions are resisting" -- while censoring the fact that health experts have also advised caution regarding fully opening schools.

Jones further declared in an Aug. 4 article that "The latest CDC data shows that the 26 states led by Republican governors have fewer than half the COVID-involved deaths of the 24 states (and D.C.) led by Democrats." She added: "Of course, states led by Republican governors are not necessarily conservative or "red" states. But of the 30 "red" states that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016, COVID-involved deaths now total 51,631, which is 59.07 percent of the 87,406 COVID deaths in the 20 states and D.C. that voted for Hillary Clinton."

Gotta keep spinning for Trump and Republicans, right? That's what Jones gets paid to do.

Election-time spin

As the election moved closer, the pro-Trump spin on the numbers ramped up. A Sept. 15 article by Jones carried the headline "COVID-19 Deaths in Last Week of August Down 83.8% From April Peak and touted how "the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 has now declined for at least five straight weeks since late July." Jones shifted her spin in a Sept. 22 article:

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 283,358 new cases of coronavirus in this county in the last seven days -- 37,417 reported yesterday -- for a total of 6,786,352 presumed or diagnosed cases since the first reported cases in February.

Yet based on death certificates submitted so far to CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, have decreased for at least five straight weeks since July 25.

For the final week of August, or the week ending August 29, NCHS recorded 4,306 presumed or confirmed COVID deaths, a 20.71 percent decrease from the 5,431 COVID deaths reported in the prior week; a 45.55 percent drop from the 7,909 deaths in the week ending July 25; and a 74.75 percent decrease from the record 17,055 deaths reported for the week ending April 25.

In another Sept. 22 article, Jones tried to shift blame for the virus in an article headlined "CDC: Adult Obesity, a Risk Factor for COVID, Is Increasing," making sure to highlight that obesity "increases the risk of severe illness from COVID-19."

Jones' Sept. 29 article was a bit of a corrective, but still featured her old spin:

As more death certificates are tabulated by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, it now appears that the COVID death toll ticked up, not down, in the week that ended on August 1, by the very smallest of margins.

For the week ending August 1, NCHS counted 7,974 COVID-19 deaths, just two more than the 7,972 recorded in the prior week.

That second COVID death peak of 7,974 is 53.24 percent below the first peak (17,055) in mid-April.

Jones had somewhat less spin and more reality in her Oct. 6 article:

Updated numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that since mid-July, approximately one thousand people have died every day in this country from COVID-19.

That's well below the mid-April peak, when 17,063 people died in the week ending April 18.

But it's an acceleration from the six-week stretch in June and early July, when the number of weekly deaths ranged from 3,777 (week ending June 27) to 5,665 (week ending July 11).

Jones tried to spin harder in her Oct. 13 article, lamenting "new cases in all 50 states and the District of Columbia over the last seven days, with the highest per-capita increases in the upper Midwest/West" but declaring that "at the same time, data based on death certificates submitted to CDC show deaths have been dropping since the week ending August 1."

Goodenough tried his hand at spinning COVID in an Oct. 13 article by finding a new way to count dead people: "As a proportion of the national population, the United States has accounted for fewer deaths attributed to the coronavirus this month than any other major country in the Western Hemisphere except for Canada, although still more than those in Western Europe." That's what spinning for Trump is all about.

As the presidential election drew closer in late October, Jones and CNS seriously ramped up that pro-Trump spin by comparing numbers to the initial surge in April.

An anonymously written Oct. 14 article served up its own very familiar pro-Trump and anti-media spin: "While the liberal media are doing all they can to try to discredit Dr. Scott Atlas, M.D., a special adviser to President Donald Trump and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, he has released five simple facts about COVID-19 to lucidly explain 'what the science tells us about this virus.'" CNS didn't say when this email was sent or to whom, though it did uncritically transcribe the email. Nor did CNS mention the fact a couple weeks earlier, CDC leader Dr. Robert Redfield expressed concern that Atlas was misinforming the public on a variety of coronavirus-related issues. For instance, Atlas stated in his email that "Children and Young Adults Are at Extremely Low Risk for Serious Illness or Death from COVID-19," while Redfield pointed out that one-fourth of new infections were among young adults ages 18 to 25.

Jones served up more pro-Trump stenography in an Oct. 22 article headlined "Trump: On Cable News, 'All You Hear Is COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID'." After uncritically transcribing a rant from Trump, she added, "As CNSNews.com reported, the number of COVID cases is accelerating, but with better treatments available, the death count,based on death certificates submitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resumed" -- then strangely cut off. Either that was an editing error, or perhaps Jones herself was getting bored with spinning so hard.

An Oct. 27 "news" article by Jones was even more aggressively a Trump campaign press release:

"The Fake News Media is riding COVID, COVID, COVID, all the way to the Election. Losers!" President Donald Trump tweeted on Monday.

But the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the number of people dying from COVID-19 in the United States dropped approximately 73 percent from its peak in the week that ended April 18 to the week that ended on September 5 (the latest week for which the CDC has relatively complete numbers).

Certainly, many partisan activists holding anchor/reporter jobs at CNN and MSNBC, to name a few liberal outlets, are hyping what they dub a second coronavirus surge.

According to CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday morning: "Twelve states are seeing record hospitalizations. Five states reporting a record increase in new cases. The U.S. is now averaging nearly 70,000 new cases a day."

But liberal media outlets omit the fact that deaths from coronavirus are not rising exponentially -- they're falling. In fact, weekly COVID deaths have never again come close to the record 17,077 deaths recorded in the week ending April 18, which was six months ago.

Deaths from COVID, as recorded by death certificates filed with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been falling since a second peak in the week ending August 1, based on preliminary data.

[...]

Rounding out the top ten for COVID deaths are Texas (17,660); California (16,483); Florida (15,948); New Jersey (14,494); Pennsylvania (8,796); Illinois (8,357); Massachusetts (8,169); Georgia (6,670); and Michigan (6,518).

At least four of those states are mentioned as swing states in next week's election, which explains the liberal media's focus on the pandemic and the effort to blame Trump for mismanaging it.

President Trump says cases are up "because we TEST, TEST, TEST. A Fake News Media Conspiracy," he tweeted on Monday. "Many young people who heal very fast. 99.9%. Corrupt Media conspiracy at all time high. On November 4th, topic will totally change. VOTE!"

On Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted: "Until November 4th., Fake News Media is going full on Covid, Covid, Covid. We are rounding the turn. 99.9%."

Jones got in one final bit of pro-Trump spin in a Nov. 3 article, the day of the election:

COVID-involved deaths in recent weeks are well below the numbers recorded this past summer, based on death certificates submitted to the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the week ending September 26, 3,809 COVID-involved deaths were reported to NCHS on a preliminary basis.

That is 30.31 percent below the 5,466 COVID deaths recorded in the week ending August 29; 53.01 percent below the 8,106 deaths recorded in the week ending July 25; roughly equivalent to the 3,791 deaths reported for the week ending June 27; 37.76 percent below the 6,120 deaths recorded in the week ending May 30; and 77.70 percent below the record 17,082 COVID deaths recorded for the week ending April 18.

Since mid-April, COVID-involved deaths have mostly trended down, with brief exceptions in early July and possibly in early October.

Jones managed to avoid mentioning Trump's name in the article, but there was no doubt for whose benefit she wrote it. And she waited until the final paragraph to note information that contradicted her spin: "CDC says cases are spiking in many states -- particularly in the upper West/Midwest (Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin) and in Rhode Island."

After the election

Jones' first coronavirus-related article after the election, on Nov. 10, started ominously: "The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts a total of 9,913,553 COVID cases in this country since January, with 105,142 new cases reported on Monday alone." But then she went into her usual bogus downplaying: "As the number of COVID cases escalates, deaths are nowhere near the record set in mid-April."

The next day, Jones attacked Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of President-elect Joe Biden's COVID-19 advisory board (not that Jones was ready to identify Biden as president-elect, mind you) for predicting the U.S. could see 200,000 cases by the Christmas holidays because "he is on record as advocating another lockdown." She then tried to deflect by throwing out per-capita coronavirus numbers:

According to the latest data from the federal Centers for Disease Control Prevention, 122,910 new COVID cases were reported in the past 24 hours, or 34.6 cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days.

Total deaths, based on death certificates submitted to CDC, stand at 237,731, or 0.3 per 100,000 people in the last seven days.

But Osterholm's prediction turned out to be correct: In the following weeks, the number of new cases regularly averaged more than 200,000.

Jones spun further in a Nov. 17 article:

An average of 4,256 people died of COVID in September, about the same as the average 4,206 who died in June. Those two months mark the low point so far for COVID deaths in this country.

According to NCHS, the 3,982 COVID-involved deaths for the week ending September 26 -- the most recent time period for which the data is fairly reliable -- is 76.69 percent below the mid-April peak, when 17,087 COVID deaths were reported; and 51.51 percent below the second peak of 8,213 COVID deaths in early August.

By Dec. 1, however, Jones had to admit a little bit of reality about rising case and mortality numbers, while still desperately invoking the higher April numbers for comparison:

"COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths across the United States are rising," the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website.

Based on the most recent death certificates submitted to CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, COVID-involved deaths in recent weeks are indeed rising, but they remain far below the record 17,089 deaths counted in the week ending April 18.

But in a Dec. 10 article, Jones was back in hard-spin mode even as cases and deaths skyrocket by focusing on an age group with the lowest fatality rate:

The number of COVID-involved deaths in this country -- 15,594 in the last seven days -- is now reaching levels not seen since the mid-April peak, according to the official tally maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But of the 261,530 COVID-involved deaths recorded by NCHS as of Dec. 9, fewer than one percent (2,450 or 0.93 percent) involved people age 34 or younger. This includes school-age children forced to learn remotely; and college-age people who, along with the rest of us, are discouraged -- and in some cases barred by executive order -- from patronizing bars and restaurants indoors.

People aged 35-44 -- this includes prime working age people -- account for 4,917 of total COVID deaths so far, or 1.88 percent.

According to death certificates submitted to and recorded by NCHS on a rolling basis, at least 7,367 people (2.81 percent) ages 44 or younger had died of COVID as of Dec. 9.

That's the kind of spin that keeps one employed at CNS.

But as the pandemic rose to new heights, Jones couldn't credibly stick to that narrative. So the spin in her Dec. 17 article was that, yes, more people are dying, but they're mostly old people so it's not that bad:

In the past week, Wednesday to Wednesday, another 14,527 people, at least, died of coronavirus in this country, according to the most recent data posted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As the table shows, the vast majority of those COVID-involved deaths -- 13,816 -- were in people age 55 or older, according to death certificates filed with CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, medical experts warned that the elderly and infirm were particularly vulnerable to the virus, and that continues to be the case.

Jones went on to concede that "the COVID death toll has been rising sharply since early October" and that "the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging Americans to "act now" to slow the spread" as winter sets in and holiday gathering occur. Trump's name did not appear at all.

But that, apparently, was all the honesty about coronavirus that CNS could handle, because that was the last of these type of articles that Jones has written. While Jones did take some time off around the holidays, she has been on the job since Jan. 13, and COVID numbers are apparently no longer her concern, even though new cases and deaths kept exploding.

Perhaps the change in presidents will bring a new concern over the numbers -- after all, she can now spin them to blame Biden.