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[0] The CDC reduced its overall COVID death count by more than 72 ,000 people last week.
[1] How did the agency explain the revision?
[2] And can we expect the numbers to change again?
[3] I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's Wednesday, March 23rd, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] Together, Russia and Ukraine supply 25 % of the world's wheat.
[6] What impact is the war having on the supply of baked goods and other foods around the globe?
[7] And a megadrought in California's Central Valley is having devastating consequences for U .S. farmers.
[8] How will struggling farms in the West impact the national food supply?
[9] Plus, the latest on Ukraine.
[10] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[11] Stay tuned.
[12] We have the news you need to know.
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[21] Last week, the CDC retracted more than 72 ,000 COVID deaths from its roles with little explanation.
[22] Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade Alorty is here with the details.
[23] So, Marade, thousands of COVID deaths are now not COVID deaths.
[24] What happened there?
[25] Yeah, it is strange.
[26] So last week, the CDC quietly removed more than 72 ,000 deaths from its COVID death count.
[27] The agency provided a footnote acknowledging the change, but the explanation was still pretty ambiguous.
[28] The footnote said that on March 15th, the data was adjusted due to a, quote, coding logic error.
[29] That resulted in a lower death count across all demographics.
[30] Specifically, the algorithm overcounted COVID deaths by 72 ,277.
[31] across 26 states, and that includes 416 pediatric deaths.
[32] The CDC also noted that some jurisdictions also include probable COVID cases in their death count, and that back in August, the data on COVID deaths was changed after they identified a data discrepancy.
[33] So they're pretty cryptic on what exactly these errors were and why they happened, but the end result is that COVID deaths were apparently significantly overcounted.
[34] And they're saying that this was purely a technical data coding mistake?
[35] That's correct.
[36] So where do the CDC numbers stand now?
[37] Well, the CDC currently has the overall COVID death count at nearly 969 ,000.
[38] The change in the overall death count was about 7 .5%, which is significant, given that we're talking about around a million deaths.
[39] The huge change in the pediatric death count drops the estimate of COVID deaths in children down to about 1 ,341 nationwide.
[40] Children were about 19 % of all COVID cases, but only about a quarter of a percent of those cases.
[41] cases were fatal.
[42] That's according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
[43] And some individual states have also revised their COVID numbers, correct?
[44] Yes, that's right.
[45] Massachusetts actually dropped its COVID death count by 3 ,700 after adopting new criteria.
[46] Another state to revise its numbers was New York, but in that case, the state increased its count of nursing home deaths.
[47] An investigation by the New York Attorney General found that the state may have undercounted nursing home deaths from COVID by as much as 50%.
[48] That issue was a significant political blow to then -Governor Andrew Cuomo.
[49] So overall, it's been almost impossible for Americans to get a transparent picture of total COVID deaths.
[50] Well, and now the CDC is saying they're going to make further changes to how they report data.
[51] Yes.
[52] In a letter last week, CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, referenced their data modernization initiative, which is what the CDC is calling their plan to make their data more accurate.
[53] The effort appears to be the direct result of pressure from law.
[54] lawmakers and media to do a better job reporting pandemic data.
[55] Do we expect the new updates are going to cause the numbers to change again?
[56] Possibly.
[57] The current standards still don't clearly differentiate between patients who died with COVID versus died from COVID or the degree to which COVID contributed to any given death.
[58] It's possible we will see another downward revision as that reporting gets more granular.
[59] Well, I think most people can agree it's been really hard to get the full story on this pandemic.
[60] Marade, thanks for reporting.
[61] Thanks, Georgia.
[62] That's Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade Allorty.
[63] Coming up, how the Ukraine war is impacting the food supply at home and abroad.
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[67] With inflation already driving up the price of essential goods nationwide, the war in Ukraine now threatens to exacerbate the problem further, and it could mean an even larger spike in your grocery bill.
[68] Here with more on what exactly is causing the spike and where Americans can expect to feel the pinch the most is Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips.
[69] So Cabot, we've been tracking the impact of inflation, but how is the war in Ukraine affecting all this, particularly when it comes to food prices?
[70] Well, more than most people would imagine.
[71] Keep in mind, Russia exports more wheat each year than any other country on Earth.
[72] And Ukraine is actually just a few spots behind them on that list.
[73] Over a quarter of all global wheat exports come from Russia or Ukraine.
[74] And that supply is now being cut off because of the war.
[75] Ukraine announced that they'd be stockpiling the wheat they harvested as part of their war effort.
[76] And Russia responded with a similar measure, cutting off weed exports to ex -Soviet bloc countries and a few other countries as well, quote, to protect the domestic food market in the face of external constraints, as they called them.
[77] Their prime minister said that.
[78] So with 25 % of the global wheat supply, essentially disappearing, prices on the remaining wheat have skyrocketed, and that's bad news for consumers.
[79] A lot of people think of wheat as just being used in things like bread, but it's used in all sorts of baked goods, pastas, and cereals, so there's going to be a price spike on more than just for sandwich.
[80] There's also growing concern about a fertilizer shortage.
[81] What can you tell us there?
[82] Yeah, it's similar to to wheat, about 10 % of all fertilizer imports came from Russia before the war.
[83] And with farmers no longer able to access Russian goods, fertilizer prices are also starting to spike.
[84] So on that note, we talked to Joel Griffith.
[85] He's a financial regulations fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
[86] This is going to have an increase not just on the price of wheat, but if we don't have the fertilizer to the same quantities, it's going to drive the price of corn, for instance, and a lot of our beef.
[87] Well, it feeds on corn.
[88] So this is going to have a ripple effect throughout the entirety of our food supply.
[89] So how are American farmers responding to that price increase?
[90] That's where it gets complicated.
[91] With the availability of wheat plummeting, obviously the price is going up.
[92] The price of wheat futures actually went up so high, in fact, that many farmers are now struggling to find buyers, even though it's in such short supply.
[93] I talked to commodities trader Brad Schaefer to get an explanation on why farmers are actually suffering, even though the price of their crops has gone so high.
[94] Well, in theory, it should be good for them, right?
[95] Because if you have something that's gone up, you know, in the case of wheat from August 2020 to now, the futures prices have gone up 123 percent, corn's gone up 138 percent, you know, soybeans 103 percent, which are, you know, three of our main products.
[96] In theory, they should do quite well in this.
[97] But they have to be able to offload it.
[98] And right now, I think that's been more of the difficulty.
[99] Okay, so as we've discussed, we have inflation combined now with wheat and fertilizer shortages.
[100] How are producers responding to all these issues?
[101] Well, a lot of food companies are already starting to get sneaky and trying to offer smaller portions without smaller prices.
[102] The thought is that people are more likely to notice a dollar price tag increase than they are a one ounce size decrease.
[103] For example, Gatorade redesigned their 32 -ounce bottles, supposedly to be, quote, more aerodynamic.
[104] But that new bottle now contains four fewer ounces for the same price as the earlier one.
[105] The average crest toothpaste is now shrunk from 4 .1 ounces to 3 .8 ounces, while bounty paper towels now contain 147 sheets compared to the 165 they used to have.
[106] And most devastating of all, for me at least, is that a small bag of cool -wrench Doritos now contains about five fewer chips per bag after the company quietly shrunk the bags from 9 .7 to 9 .2 ounces each, John, you know how much I love my burritos.
[107] So if you feel like you're going through household products and common groceries more quickly than usual, you're not crazy.
[108] It is real.
[109] Yeah, and things are getting a little too real when it comes to the increased costs of goods.
[110] Cabot, thanks for the reporting.
[111] In time.
[112] That's DailyWire's Cabot Phillips.
[113] California and much of the West is experiencing a historic drought, with rainfall in January and February of 2022, hitting 100 -year lows in some areas.
[114] Here to give us the details on the drought and how it's affecting farmers is DailyWire's Charlotte Pence Bond.
[115] Charlotte, you live in California right now.
[116] What's the situation there?
[117] with this drought?
[118] Well, the California drought is entering into its third year, and it's not looking good.
[119] Even from where I live, I've definitely noticed the impact and the pushback from locals against certain water policies.
[120] In terms of objective measures, a survey this month from the Department of Water Resources found that the snowpack around the state is almost 40 % down, and California's major water reservoirs are below their historical averages.
[121] And California's wet season is ending this month.
[122] So with water levels already so low, we can expect it to get worse as the year progresses.
[123] And beyond just water access, the dry landscape is also leading to secondary concerns like wildfire issues.
[124] Yeah, the wildfires in California have made national headlines multiple times in recent years.
[125] Now, what about farming?
[126] The Central Valley is largely agricultural, right?
[127] Yes, it is.
[128] And that's where this really affects all Americans.
[129] California's Central Valley grows about a fourth of the country's food.
[130] That includes around 40 % of the country's fruits and nuts, but there's already evidence that farmers are cutting back production.
[131] A UC Merced study found that California farmers left about 400 ,000 acres of agricultural area uncultivated last year because of the shortage of water.
[132] Some experts predict that number will reach a million.
[133] And most of that untouched land was in the Central Valley.
[134] California has about 10 million acres of crop land.
[135] So that means at least four percent of it aren't being used.
[136] The same study estimated that the 2021 drought costs the agriculture sector in the state around $1 .1 billion and almost 9 ,000 jobs.
[137] I spoke to Vice Mayor Diane Sharp of Hanford, California, a town in the Central Valley.
[138] She basically said that farmers are having to make decisions about which crops to grow, and they're choosing the more permanent crops over other ones.
[139] Okay, clearly this is a significant problem.
[140] What is the state doing to address this water issue?
[141] Well, just this month, Governor Newsom announced another $22 .5 million in help for what his office described as an immediate drought emergency.
[142] A full third of Newsom's funding, though, is going to go towards educating Californians on how to conserve water.
[143] But California's strict environmental policies are a hurdle too.
[144] One example is the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act, which earmarks 800 ,000 acre feet of water for fish and wildlife each year.
[145] Farmers have also pushed for more reservoirs and dams to hold onto the water supply from rain, but policies have made it so that water is prioritized for the ecosystem a lot of times over farming.
[146] The Environmental Protection Agency just recently said it will loan $2 .2 billion to help create a reservoir in the northern area of the state, but that will only cover around half of the project, plus the final sign -off for the funds is still years away.
[147] So how long is this drought expected to last?
[148] It's hard to say.
[149] A study published by the journal Nature estimated the drought will persist at least through 2022 and likely longer.
[150] Okay, so it sounds like yet another reason to worry about higher grocery prices.
[151] Right.
[152] Charlotte, thanks for the reporting.
[153] Thanks for having me. That was DailyWire's Charlotte Pince Bond.
[154] With updates on Ukraine, DailyWire's Ian Howarth.
[155] The latest from Ukraine is that Zelensky and his government are refusing to surrender after Russian forces, who are still besieging the southern port city of Maripol, gave them an ultimatum to give up by 5 a .m. on Monday morning.
[156] Since then, Ukraine says it has recaptured a key suburb of the capital city Kiev.
[157] President Biden will travel to Poland during his trip to Europe this week, which is now home to over 2 million Ukrainian refugees.
[158] And finally, there were growing concerns regarding the Chernobyl nuclear power site.
[159] Half of the staff there have been released stuff are being held by Russian forces for weeks.
[160] And there were reports that the radiation monitors around the site are no longer working.
[161] The latest is that wildfires that broke out in the area have now been extinguished.
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