The narrative Trump retweeted focused on the CDC’s update of comorbidity data, which shows “the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease.” The tweet shared by the president claimed that the CDC had “quietly updated” its earlier figures to show that “only 6% of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from Covid,” while “the other 94% had 2-3 other serious illnesses,” implying that the CDC had covered up this fact.
But the CDC data update was not secretive or done “quietly” — it was published as part of a weekly update — and it simply provided additional details about reported COVID-19 fatalities. It distinguished COVID-19 deaths with no underlying health conditions (6%) from those of patients with underlying health conditions (94%). An underlying health condition does not inherently mean someone is on the brink of death, let alone that it is the primary cause of COVID-19 fatalities; for instance, an underlying health condition reported by the CDC can be diabetes, heart disease, or obesity (more than 42% of Americans are obese).
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had to push back against the conspiracy theory after Trump amplified it, saying, “The numbers that you’ve been hearing, the 180,000-plus deaths, are real deaths from COVID-19. Let there not be any confusion about that. It’s not 9,000 deaths from COVID-19. It’s 180-plus thousand deaths.” But the false claim nevertheless gained traction on social media following Trump’s retweet. The CDC has since been flooded with calls and media requests about the conspiracy theory, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) has used the inflation myth to deny Iowa’s increasing COVID-19 cases.
Trump’s recklessness has again empowered the QAnon conspiracy theory — while simultaneously undermining the CDC
This is far from the first time that Trump has retweeted a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory or echoed a right-wing media attack against public health officials during the coronavirus pandemic. But this latest example shows how the president’s amplification of false claims and dangerous misinformation helps them spread on social media.
QAnon and coronavirus conspiracy theorists alike celebrated Trump’s retweet. The CDC is once again faced with combating widespread misinformation promoted by the president, as the myth spread like wildfire across major social media platforms afterward.
The false 6% narrative is beneficial to Trump as it suggests the CDC has falsified its death tolls -- which are alarmingly high -- in order to hurt the president politically. This allows him to downplay his administration’s deadly mishandling of the pandemic.
Here’s how it spread on various platforms:
Twitter
“Only 6%” began trending on Twitter after Trump retweeted misinformation about CDC statistics from “Mel Q,” a supporter of the violence-linked, pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory. Twitter eventually took down Mel Q’s tweet because it violated the platform’s terms of service, which have been updated during the pandemic “to address content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.” But the damage was already done: Trump’s retweet was a greenlight to coronavirus deniers, and it further empowered the online QAnon community.
