Russian Disinformation: Deny, Deny, Deny

For months, Russian leaders insisted that their country had no plans to attack Ukraine -- despite the 100,000-plus Russian troops assembling on the Ukrainian border. 

“Russia has never hatched, is not hatching and will never hatch any plans to attack anyone," Kremlim spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Nov. 28 of a plot to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. "Russia is a peaceful country, which is interested in good relations with its neighbors.”

In a Jan. 19 interview on CNN, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov repeated the party line. "We will not attack, strike, invade, quote unquote, whatever Ukraine,” he said. 

In our article "Russian Rhetoric Ahead of Attack Against Ukraine: Deny, Deflect, Mislead," we provide a timeline of Russian leaders denying the obvious -- until Feb. 24, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine. 

“This is a terrible day for Ukraine and a dark day for Europe,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a Feb. 24 tweet.  

Reader: Are COVID deaths exaggerated? Anti-vaccination groupies have told me that the United States has only had about 50,000 deaths from Covid-19 itself.

They assert that the rest of the nearly million deaths we've sustained have been due to what they call co-morbidities, deadly diseases that kill people and the government rates them as dying from Covid just because they also contracted Covid before death.

Would you clear this up for me because I'm trying to fact-check everything.

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: COVID-19 deaths are not exaggerated. This is a common deception advanced by some who -- for whatever reason -- want to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19.

We have written several articles about social media posts that misrepresented CDC data on COVID-19 deaths. As we wrote in September 2020, the CDC provides weekly updates that include information on additional conditions present in patients who died with COVID-19. The latest data, as of Feb. 20, show COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on 5% of death certificates, while the other 95% of deaths included other illnesses or conditions, or comorbidities.

That’s not unusual since COVID-19 often causes other serious conditions, such as pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome — which rank among the most-cited comorbidities for deaths involving COVID-19. Long-term conditions that increase the risk for severe COVID-19, such as diabetes or hypertension, are also among the comorbidities listed on death certificates.

The CDC notes, however, that 90% of all death certificates mentioning COVID-19 listed it as the underlying cause of death — or the condition that started the chain of events that led to a person’s death. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed this issue on ABC's "Good Morning America" in August 2020, when there were 180,000-plus COVID-19 deaths. At the time, some on social media had been misrepresenting the CDC data to falsely claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths were caused by COVID-19 because the rest of those who had died had comorbidities. 

"The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just COVID. That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19. They did,” Fauci said in the "Good Morning America" interview. “So the numbers you’ve been hearing — the 180,000-plus deaths — are real deaths from COVID-19. Let [there] not be any confusion about that."

There are currently more than 930,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Former Presidents Are Not Allowed to Take Home Official Records": The National Archives recovered 15 boxes of materials from former President Donald Trump’s time in office. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, claimed that the law allowed Trump to “take documents when he left the White House.” But a former president isn’t allowed to take possession of official records, which Trump has said these are. 
• "Rick Scott Proposed ‘All Americans’ Should Pay Income Tax, Then Denied That He Did": A multipart policy plan released by Sen. Rick Scott on Feb. 22 says “all Americans” should have to pay “income tax,” while saying that “over half of Americans” currently do not. But in an interview later that day, after criticism from congressional Democrats, the Florida senator falsely claimed that he had not suggested increasing federal income taxes for that many people.

• "Vacuna de refuerzo contra el COVID-19 mejora la protección, contrario a las afirmaciones sobre el ‘agotamiento inmunitario’": Una dosis de refuerzo de la vacuna contra el COVID-19 aumenta la protección contra el coronavirus. Pero en una entrevista, el comediante Bill Maher dijo incorrectamente que las dosis de refuerzo “no servían para nada” y podían causar el “agotamiento del sistema inmunitario”. Otros han hecho afirmaciones similares en internet. La idea de que el sistema inmunitario se agotaría no tiene ningún fundamento, incluso después de repetidas dosis de refuerzo. 
• "Mensajes sobre ‘reactivos cruzados’ tergiversan la fiabilidad de las pruebas PCR para diagnosticar COVID-19": Las PCR, o pruebas de reacción en cadena de la polimerasa para detectar el COVID-19, son muy precisas. Sin embargo, usuarios en las redes sociales están compartiendo listas de gérmenes que harán, según dicen infundadamente, que las pruebas arrojen falsos positivos. En realidad, es todo lo contrario. La lista incluye patógenos que han sido probados por los fabricantes y que no alteran los resultados de las pruebas.