Your link is about the Spanish Flu, which was the 1918-1920 epidemic. Covid is a different disease altogether.

Assuming they went to college.

I’d like to imagine they took the short trivia fact and applied the inverse of the compression algorithm to bloat it into something that satisfied the editor.

As absolutely stupid as this is, it’s no different than changing the maps to show Denali rather than Mount McKinley. I don’t think you’re missing anything.