There have been several severe cases of "misrepresentation," for lack of a better term. I don't know if they meet the criteria for fraud, and I don't know whether the people pushing the stories were lying on purpose or just genuinely mistaken. They were not large enough in quantity to alter the statistics, but they got enough media coverage to alter The Narrative.
For example, there was an infant in Connecticut who suffocated and died from either improper bedding or being rolled over by an parent, the details are fuzzy. However, the infant tested positive for COVID and the case was reported as a COVID death for months by every major local and national publication. While you're correct that one miscategorized death isn't going to distort the excess mortality figures, the headline "Connecticut infant dies of coronavirus" has a real impact on the behavior and psyche of the population (and politicians enacting lockdown/mitigation procedures).
We've seen these types of "noble lies" throughout the pandemic. Statistically, COVID kills people who are very old and/or very sick. Not exclusively, but primarily and overwhelmingly. That's the fact. But Fauci and the governors want young and healthy people to take it seriously, so they push the outlier stories of the young and healthy people who get sick as if those are typical cases.
Kids have been at practically zero risk. Healthy people have been at practically zero risk. The vaccines are extremely effective. Those are all "The Science." But they deliberately hide "The Science" that's good news because they don't want people to let their guard down.
