But if you keep reading, buried many paragraphs down in the story are a few key facts. First, the supposed “cover-up” simply involves changing from recording deaths as they are reported to recording deaths under the date they specifically occurred. Whether one form of reporting is better than the other is something for experts to squabble over. But neither constitutes a “cover-up,” and neither is inaccurate. Indeed, the article contains a quote from an expert defending the change.

“Deaths by date of death curve is the most accurate you can get,” University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi told the Miami Herald. “You know exactly when people died. You know how to construct the curve and exactly when we were experiencing surges in terms of deaths.”

And, perhaps most glaringly, both sets of data are still publicly available . That’s right: Anyone who wants to see deaths by reporting date can still do so.

That’s not much of a cover-up.