Iowa Starting Line: “Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst seemed to embrace on Monday a thoroughly-discredited QAnon conspiracy theory about U.S. deaths from COVID-19 being a mere fraction of what has been reported. As Amie Rivers of the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier reported, Ernst said she was “so skeptical” of the official death count when asked by an attendee if the government was over-reporting coronavirus deaths. ‘They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19,’ Ernst said, seemingly referring to the debunked conspiracy theory that only around 6% of COVID-19 deaths were due to the virus. ‘I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.’ Going even further, however, Ernst also suggested that doctors were intentionally falsifying coronavirus cases in order to receive more money for caring for the patient. ‘These health care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?’ she questioned the crowd.”