Yahoo Story on Florida COVID Study Misrepresented Key Finding, Study’s Author Says

A Yahoo News story warning that “Florida COVID numbers face new scrutiny” incorrectly framed the key finding of the study it profiled, according to the principal researcher of the study in question as well as other researchers quoted in the same article.

“Florida is undercounting the number of people who died from COVID-19 by thousands of cases, casting new doubt on claims that Gov. Ron DeSantis navigated the coronavirus pandemic successfully,” begins the fear-mongering story, published by Yahoo national correspondent Alexander Nazaryan on Tuesday.

The story was built around a study published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, which analyzed Florida’s “excess deaths” during the COVID-19 pandemic — or the difference between the actual number of deaths in the state and what was expected, after accounting for registered COVID deaths.

The study — which found that Florida, after accounting for COVID deaths, had 4,924 excess deaths from March to September 2020 — reported that “the impact of COVID-19 on mortality is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest.”

Yahoo incorrectly framed the nearly 5,000 deaths as COVID mortalities that the state has let slip through the cracks.

“In the case of Florida, the researchers say, 4,924 excess deaths should have been counted as resulting from COVID-19 but for the most part were ruled as having been caused by something else, thus lowering Florida’s coronavirus fatality count,” the article reads. The story led Drudge Report on Tuesday with the caption “RESEARCH FINDS 5,000 MORE DEAD,” and was prominently shared by Florida Democrats Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried.

But Moosa Tatar, the lead author of the study featured by Yahoo, said the story’s framing of his analysis was incorrect, and he does not yet know how many of the excess deaths are attributable to COVID.

“The impact of COVID-19 on mortality is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest. But we need further research to determine specific reasons for this,” he told National Review. “These deaths may have been directly or indirectly associated with COVID-19.”

Nazaryan went on to imply that Governor Ron DeSantis could be pressuring the state’s medical examiners, who have “some discretion,” to deliberately undercount COVID deaths. “In Florida, the state’s 25 district medical examiners are directly appointed by the governor,” he noted.

Buried in the story were several epidemiologists and statisticians who said that compared to other states, Florida’s excess death numbers were nothing new and are not an outlier amidst a deadly pandemic.

Dan Weinberger, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told Yahoo that Florida’s excess death count was average.

Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida who was also quoted, described Florida’s excess deaths as “kind of middle-of-the-pack,” and told Yahoo that its framing of the excess mortalities — treating them all as COVID deaths that had slipped through official counts — was incorrect.

“You could’ve never gotten the coronavirus, delayed needed health care, and died from diabetes-related complications. That’s still indirectly tied to the pandemic,” he explained, adding that “I don’t think there’s anything egregious going on with the data. I would know. I am just constantly in these data.”

Lauren Rossen, who researches excess deaths for the Centers for Disease Control, told Yahoo that “Florida doesn’t stand out to me.”

“I agree with the other researchers quoted in the article, Dr. Weinberger and Dr. Salemi,” Rossen told National Review. “We all indicated that the data in Florida are generally consistent with what we see for the US generally, in terms of the gap between COVID-19 deaths and total excess deaths. Florida doesn’t stand out as having an especially large or small difference between COVID-19 and total excess deaths relative to other states or the US overall.”

Weinberger, who has his own study of “the gap between the reported COVID-19 deaths and the total increase in deaths compared to expected number of deaths,” echoed the assessment.

“We think that many of those ‘uncounted’ excess deaths were due to COVID — the timing and intensity of the peak in excess deaths closely matches that of the COVID-19 wave,” he told National Review. “But other things, like people avoiding healthcare early in the pandemic, delaying treatments, and other indirect effects of the pandemic can influence this gap as well. If you look at the size of this gap relative to other states, it is really not remarkable — some states have a smaller gap, other have a larger gap.”

As for the 4,924 statistic in question, Weinberger agreed with Moosa, explaining that “it is not possible to say with certainty how much of the unattributed excess is due to COVID-19.”

Yahoo did not return a request for comment. It is unclear why Nazaryan published the article with the current framing, but a Twitter thread from user “Max Eagle” notes that Rebekah Jones, the infamous former data manager for Florida’s Department of Health, has been pushing the study for weeks on Twitter.

In the fallout of her firing for multiple performance issues, Jones — who has repeatedly pushed the conspiracy that the state has been covering up COVID deaths — was interviewed multiple times by Nazaryan and described as a “whistleblower.”