New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio abruptly added 4,000 deaths to the city's roster of Wuhan virus deaths. He did this even though there are no tests proving that these 4,000 people died because of the virus. The mayor claims he made the change to increase statistical accuracy, but he may have been acting upon baser motives.

One problem with getting a handle on the Wuhan virus is that we have no accurate count telling how many people have become sick with or died from it, whether at home or abroad. Different countries use different tests; different tests have various rates of fake results, both positive and negative; and not everyone is or can be tested. Moreover, in different places, people are classified as Wuhan virus deaths if they tested positive for the virus regardless of what killed them.

We know that there may be people who have the virus but don’t know it, people who are sick with something that may or may not be the virus, and people who die from causes that can be attributed to the virus, although without any real certainty. Antibody tests are useful for providing some mathematical probability about the virus’s prevalence in a given population, but the tests also don’t home in on the exact number of people who are or have been ill.

Put another way, virus counts around the world are subject to a lot of guesswork. The inability to get accurate numbers allows different jurisdictions to adjust the numbers depending on their policy goals.

Most people believe that China severely undercounted its Wuhan virus numbers, both when determining how many became sick and how many died. As a communist country, China has an aversion to admitting bad news because doing so is always a reflection on its all-controlling government. Additionally, now that it’s trying to avoid responsibility for releasing a pandemic on the world, it wants to deny that there ever was a problem within its borders.

Iran is also probably undercounting its numbers to deflect from the mullahs’ failures. The same is true for Russia and other totalitarian countries.

In America, though, things are different. The virus is racing through Democrat strongholds, whether cities or states. One might assume that the political leaders in those cities would like to downplay the numbers to prove their effectiveness in handling a crisis under their aegis. The opposite is true, however,

In a free society, a crisis affords the government greater control over citizens. Various jurisdictions, especially those under Democrat control, are using the opportunity to turn into police states. The government locks people in their homes, mandates the limited circumstances under which they can leave their homes, and arrests them for any deviations.

In North Carolina, police arrested people who observed social distance but assembled in the same general area to demand that the state reopen. In Michigan, among other things, Governor Gretchen Whitmer is banning the sale of seeds for growing fruits and vegetables. In Vermont, the government is mandating what stores are allowed to sell. In Philadelphia, ten police officers dragged a passenger off a bus for not wearing a mask. In Winslow, Arizona, a 71-year-old man was arrested for opening a small Native American store.

The more frightened people are, the more readily they will yield to a government’s promise that, if they allow the government to control them completely, they will be safe.

Democrats especially also have a strong motive for inflating infection and death rates: They are trying to show that President Trump botched handling the pandemic. They can only do this by pointing to an inordinately high death rate.

Finally, American governments might inflate the number of Wuhan virus deaths to get money. The federal government is directing funds to those jurisdictions that are experiencing more Wuhan virus infections. This is especially important in New York, in which Governor Cuomo slashed the state’s Medicaid funding.

All three of those factors may figure into New York City's announcement on Tuesday that it is adding 4,000 deaths to its roster of Wuhan virus deaths, despite the absence of any certainty that those people died from the Wuhan virus:

New York City added nearly 4,000 people who never tested positive for the coronavirus to its death toll Tuesday, bringing coronavirus-related deaths in the city to around 10,000 people. The city decided to add 3,700 people to its death tolls, who they “presumed” to have died from the virus, according to a report from The New York Times. The additions increased the death toll in the U.S. by 17%, according to the Times report, and included people who were suffering from symptoms of the virus, such as intense coughing and a fever. [snip] The report stated that Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio decided over the weekend to change the way the city is counting deaths.

Maybe de Blasio is just making the records more accurate. Or maybe de Blasio has ulterior motives for increasing the death rate in his city by 17%. Democrats will incline to the former view; cynics and Republicans to the latter.