There are a lot of overcounts. People who die of gunshots are COVID-19 deaths if they test positive. A huge number of people have died from secondary effects: being unable to get essential heart surgery, suicide, some people have even died of Malaria because doctors assumed it was COVID and told them to not come in.
I was wondering if we were undercounting too, but the more I look at the data, to more it's likely we're overcounting fatalities by a large amount.
It's virtually certain that Covid deaths are undercounted in the US. Excess deaths are nearly 30% higher than expected. Belgium has used extremely strict counting for deaths, their per capita death numbers are likely the most accurate in the world and are ~2 times higher than the US' numbers.
“Our (DOH COVID-19) dashboard numbers do include any deaths to a person that has tested positive to COVID-19.”
“We don’t always know the cause of death for a death when it is first reported on our dashboard. That is true. Over the course of the outbreak, we have been monitoring and recording the causes of death as we know it. We currently do have some deaths that are being reported that are clearly from other causes. We have about five deaths — less than five deaths — that we know of that are related to obvious other causes. In this case, they are from gunshot wounds.”
> We have about five deaths — less than five deaths — that we know of that are related to obvious other causes.
That's a strange phrasing. Less than five? Did they forget the word "four"? Or is it three, two, or one? Why beat around the bush if they have a number?
I get it for bigger numbers, if somebody refers to 997 of something as "about a thousand, less than a thousand", I get that. "nine hundred ninety seven" is a mouthful. But "about five, less than five"? Give me a break.
That section of the article is a quote of someone speaking. It could have been phrased more accurately, but reading that sentence as a quote of someone speaking it just sounds like they did not quite remember the exact number when they were asked the question, and their word-for-word response was written down.
I was wondering if we were undercounting too, but the more I look at the data, to more it's likely we're overcounting fatalities by a large amount.