People don't understand incentives. The more covid, the more money = more cases. When the British colonized India, they wanted to reduce the cobra population. They figured to pay per dead cobra turned over. Did that reduce the cobra population? Nope, people started raising them to kill and hand over to the British. The cobra population exploded, d'oh.
Think of all the countries with severe lock down measures. You think they have any incentive to inflate, or even be honest about, their numbers? China's a perfect example. They covered up their real numbers, and the main stream media helped them.