Manipulation of information in times of crisis: evidence from Covid excess mortality “Governmental information manipulation has been hard to measure and study systematically. This paper provides comparable country-level estimates of the extent of misinformation in official data, in a large and diverse set of countries. We hand-collect data from a variety of sources in 134 countries to estimate misreporting of Covid mortality in 2020-2021. We find that information manipulation by governments during this period was remarkably widespread: between 45%–55% of governments misreport the number of deaths. 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞: 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝟓.𝟎𝟖 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟎-𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐭 𝟏𝟐.𝟒𝟕 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧. The lion’s share of misreporting cannot be attributed to a country’s capacity to accurately diagnose and report deaths. Contrary to some theoretical expectations, information manipulation takes the form of downplaying rather than exaggerating the severity of the crisis. What characterizes governments that manipulate information? We examine the role of macroeconomic incentives, culture, audience sophistication, and institutions. The evidence strongly suggests that misreporting is higher where governments face fewer social and institutional constraints; in countries holding elections during this period; and in countries with a communist legacy.” #COVIDisnotover #mask4yourlife https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10887-026-09266-w