“Screening all countries in the WHO dataset for evidence of underdispersion yields 21 country with statistically significant underdispersion. Most of the countries in this list are known, based on the excess mortality data, to strongly undercount Covid deaths“
We believe that the most likely explanation for observed underdispersion patterns is deliberate data tampering, when a country or a region did not report the same values as were in fact internally obtained. Such tampering may not necessarily have malicious intent (e.g. if somebody was ‘re-distributing’ the values across days), but, together with the evidence of underreporting coming from excess mortality, is strongly suggestive of it.”
