[BFatts]

Why is it suspect? When someone dies of influenza in a year, but has heart disease, do we say they died of heart disease or influenza? I suspect influenza is the cause of death. Statistically, over the past 100 years we haven't HAD a pandemic, but wow here we are with one and everyone is fast to say "ignore the covid numbers, the real data is heart disease because it's been that way forever." Well, forever just got pushed outta the way.

[Out_of_Characte]

I understand that cause of death is multivariable, like the complicated reduction in life expectancy due to poor habits, city smog, individual effects of smoking, etc. But if a person has heart disease and influenza on the table, shouldn't they statistically be worse off if covid might be in the mix as well? Regardless of which is written on the death certificate, the amount of supposed deaths 'caused' by covid even by minimal estimates should be significantly larger than the margin of error on death records we have. Total deaths per year ( including absolutely everything) 'only' totals 3 million which means 200k covid deaths is already 7% of that.

the reported differences are interesting no matter how you cut it, either covid isn't as bad, or it is bad and people aren't dying of certain other causes. Alternatively the US really sucks at counting.

[eesmith]

A death certificate may list multiple causes of death.