How do you know that this was the cause of death when all we know is that these people were tested positive on Covid19 before they died?
Not denying that Covid19 is a thing and measures are necessary but I think this question is valid when reading such headlines.
A positive test is not even necessary to report them as Covid-19 deaths in the US.
> Should “COVID-19” be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?
> COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.
> A positive test is not even necessary to report them as Covid-19 deaths in the US.
But this applies to other forms of death. We count flu deaths in the same way, so the data is equally skewed.
> > > COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.
People can only put it on the death certificate if they can make that assumption to the best of their knowledge or belief. It's not doctors guessing.
I think the comment claims that both flu and corona deaths are assigned almost solely based on symptoms and medical history (eg. if someone comes in with a fever, develops a pneumonia and dies then they look at signs to tell apart the diseases - did the patient have runny nose and joint aches? yes? then flu. no? but had shortness of breath? corona.)
I would bet this number is an underestimate, not at overestimate.
There are probably more people dying in their homes of covid-19 without ever having received a test (and thus not being counted) than people with a severe covid-19 reaction (since its still very hard to get tested if you have mild symptoms) but dying from something else.
All mortality cause numbers are estimates, and the method is clearly stated in the website.
The title of the submission is somewhat misleading (we can't really say that the leading cause of death on that day was COVID-19), but the information is the best we have and it's helpful to make sense of the current crisis.
What you're asking can only be done months from now, once we have numbers for all deaths and their official causes.
