I see no reason as to why they should be making up numbers.
And that is also not what I said, and you know that as well.
Here's what I said.
19,000 is a fake number, full of duplicate teams and ghost ships at best.
And I see no one has disputed that.
(https://youtu.be/uRik9erWgQ8?t=20s)
Did you know that there are no uninteresting numbers? If there was an uninteresting number, the fact that it was the only one would make it unique, and therefore interesting. If there were more than one uninteresting numbers, there would be a highest and a lowest uninteresting number, which would also makes those numbers interesting. So you would have to move those numbers into the interesting group also. So you see, no number, no matter what it is, can ever be uninteresting.