Newsmax host peddles debunked report on excess deaths due to COVID-19

Yes, the very deadly pandemic is, in fact, very deadly

Written by Jason Campbell

Published

On the December 7 edition of Newsmax’s Stinchfield, host Grant Stinchfield used a debunked claim made in Johns Hopkins University’s student-run newspaper to spread false information about the COVID-19 pandemic. The article, which was originally posted on the newspaper’s website on November 22 and has since been retracted by the paper, claims that there have been no excess deaths in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

This is demonstrably (and obviously) false.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 280,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 so far throughout 2020. Additionally, the CDC has reported that the U.S. suffered nearly 300,000 excess deaths from January through October 2020 when compared to previous years.

On November 27, the Johns Hopkins student paper retracted its story containing the false claim regarding excess deaths in an effort to stop the spread of pandemic misinformation and because the study used to substantiate the claim was flawed. Despite this, the lie that COVID-19 has not caused excess deaths has already been amplified on Gateway Pundit and right-wing social media accounts. Now, it has reached President Donald Trump’s new favorite cable news channel.

From the December 7, 2020, edition of Newsmax's Stinchfield 

GRANT STINCHFIELD (HOST): The media is responsible for pushing politicians to locking down. Nearly every one of the mainstream media outlets that all push a bogus narrative that contracting the Chinese virus is somehow a death sentence is responsible for all of this. It's not a death sentence, by the way. In fact, one researcher from Johns Hopkins took data from the height of the COVID outbreak and concluded that the nation saw no increase in excess deaths due to COVID. And, in fact, we actually saw a decrease in deaths from other diseases. The reporter for the student-run Johns Hopkins newspaper quoted Dr. Genevieve Briand as explaining the decrease in other deaths this way, and I quote, “Deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza, pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.” Meaning people were still dying from those ailments. Only COVID was the only ailment being listed. That had Dr. Briand concluding this: “These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people's assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

Now that, folks, is a blockbuster of a report from Johns Hopkins University. But Johns Hopkins couldn't have any of that. A study that is perceived insensitive or even trivializing the pandemic must be squashed. So they took down the student's article on Briand's study, promptly putting up a warning that Dr. Briand's study is “inaccurate” and “being used to spread false information.” Now, I'm using it, but I'm not using it to spread false information. I'm only using it to spread just plain information so you can be armed with facts to decide for yourself. A novel idea seeing that most of the mainstream media wants to dictate how you should live. That fact, that government leaders take cues from fake news stories, is the biggest threat we have to a society today. Our society.