Certain government officials and mainstream journalists manipulate COVID-19 death data to magnify the severity of the pandemic. This involves avoiding question-begging geographical comparisons. For instance, how is it that:
Russia with thrice the population of Italy and a 4,200-kilometre, 29-crossing border with China has had 681 COVID-19 fatalities while Italy, at the nether end of Marco Polo's trek, has had 26,384;
Madrid (population 7 million) has suffered more COVID-19 deaths than Asia's eight most populous countries combined (population 3.6 billion); and,
The New Jersey-New York-Boston megalopolis has buried two-thirds of America's COVID-19 fatalities.