Not only that, but if you have a patient in a hospice with stage 4 lung cancer who dies and tests positive for Covid, does that go in the "Covid death" bucket?
Honest question. I don't know the answer. I assume it's left up the physician's judgement?
COVID-19 doesn't kill on its own, but weakens your body that other diseases kill you. The most common way of killing is pneumonia, which is basically done after it weakens your body other bacteria that you otherwise would be safe from steps in and kills you. Another common symptom is causing blood clotting, so some people died of stroke.
Yes, maybe that stage 4 lung cancer patient would die anyway, but then there are other deaths that are covid-19 but aren't counted. In fact no one would count is as covid cause in such obvious scenario.
BTW: also it's exactly the opposite to what you're trying to imply[1].
It's not left up to physician's judgement, it's mandated that all such deaths are reported as COVID-19 deaths. This is based on WHO guidance.
This has upset a lot of physicians and pathologists, exactly because their own judgement is being overridden and they know it's broken the statistics completely. In the UK they are calling for a systematic review of all deaths attributed to COVID:
The COVID death counts are hopelessly over-counted. This is why there's a cottage industry of people pointing out things like "COVID deaths" which mysteriously also suffered from being murdered, or drug overdoses, or undiagnosed leukaemia.
Then you get into the problem of care homes being authorised to report COVID deaths without any testing or formally trained opinion at all. In France, as soon as there is a "suspected case" in a nursing home (e.g. due to coughing), all deaths are considered "suspected Covid19 deaths", and as soon as there is a "confirmed case" in a nursing home (even if symptomless), all deaths are considered "confirmed Covid19 deaths":
Over-counting of COVID is absolutely rampant. The top voted post on this thread is claiming that all excess deaths must be caused by COVID, as if shutting down hospitals have no impact. In reality:
"More children died after failing to get timely medical treatment during lockdown than lost their lives because of coronavirus, new research by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) suggests."
Of course the numbers for children are small. For older people it's more extreme. In the UK emergency ward admissions halved, including for cardiac arrests. There's now a backlog of 2.4 million cancer patients awaiting diagnosis or treatment. The excess deaths from lockdowns will be with us for a long time.
Honest question. I don't know the answer. I assume it's left up the physician's judgement?