It has been a while since people accused China of allegedly covering its Coronavirus death toll and misled the world about the outbreak in Wuhan initially. But now, experts are accusing the US of playing the same card. They said that as the infection numbers in US spiked recently and the death toll is about to hit 10,000-mark, the real number of Coronavirus death cases could be far higher.
It was revealed that the official death toll fails to count many American people who died without undergoing the test for COVID-19, which means the true devastation caused by the virus may never be known.
Is US hiding Coronavirus death toll?
Amid the global pandemic several conspiracy theories are going viral on social media. One of them was China faking the death toll. But the major country which continuously targeted China for its role in covering up facts about the virus, is now under the spotlight after experts accused US authorities of their failure to show actual death tally in the country.
As reported by the Washington Post, the lack of access to tests across the US in the initial days of the Coronavirus crisis likely means that thousands of people died but were never counted, especially in rural areas, where doctors believe many deaths in the past few months were likely misidentified as influenza or pneumonia, reported the New York Times. Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security said, "We definitely think there are deaths that we have not accounted for."
US fighting Coronavirus or hiding the fault?
On March 12, CDC director Robert Redfield acknowledged that some flu patients may have been misdiagnosed and actually had coronavirus. During a testimony before the House Committee, he was asked whether without test kits, it's possible that those who had been diagnosed as influenza patients might have been suffering from COVID-19.
In response, CDC director stated: "The standard practice is the first thing we do tests for influenza." Then Robert Redfield was asked in particular whether it is possible that people wer dying for what appears to be influenza but in reality, those are Coronavirus cases. Then, responded by saying, "Some cases have been diagnosed in the US."
Experts said that the real issue is that people did die of the coronavirus but the death was attributed to influenza. That is difficult to control because the different standards across the US means many jurisdictions have their own way of dealing with the situation. So, the experts warn that it could take months to consolidate all the numbers and have a more accurate death toll. But even if they find out, it will still remain a subject of debate.
In terms of Italy, recently the mayor of the northern town of Nembro said that the total number of people who died of Coronavirus between January and March was four times higher than average for that time of year. In France, the official death toll soared after local authorities started counting deaths in hospitals that had been left out of the count.
Emergence of conspiracy theories
Meanwhile, many conspiracy theories have emerged related to the Coronavirus crisis, mainly in China and the US. Experts widely believe that China, where the outbreak emerged has undercounted the number of people who died of COVID-19 in Hubei province, there are some claims that Coronavirus is a bioweapon, which was created in Wuhan laboratory and the Asian country has used it to control the world and dominate the US.
After an US intelligence report claimed how China hid Coronavirus details from the whole world, Chinese authorities criticized the report and said America is playing its own game to hide the faults they are making in the country.
Soon, another theory came under the spotlight. It is about a Harvard professor. Some reports claimed that Dr Charles Lieber was arrested in January 2020 by the US authorities for 'creating coronavirus and selling it to China'. Later it was revealed that Dr Lieber was taken under custody for lying and making fraudulent statements to the US federal authorities about funds which he had allegedly received from the Chinese government though he has no connection to the Coronavirus.
