Marbles,
The key words in the newest releases is the word "trying" the state system for death certificates is computerized they could fix any of them by bring up causes related to Covid. That same director is the one who stood at a press conference and said if they test positive for Covid it counts as a Covid death no matter the real cause. Little has been done to change this and it dammn sure should of never been stated to do it that way because all it does is inflate numbers.
The main take i have on it is nobody in government, medical field and darn sure private people know the best, or right way to handle Covid and all the issues it has caused. It sure seems that some things (ideas) are thrown out just to see if maybe they work and if they don't they move on to something else.
It did happen, NOT happening now. NOT happening for almost THREE months. Even if I accepted your "trying" argument, your point is completely invalid at the present and has been completely invalid for months (plural). Unless you have documentation I cannot find, which you have not provided. That video is from May 13th, rather old information that was already discussed. If you are so concerned with accuracy, why not complain about Texas which is currently under counting it's case rate by tens of thousands?
You computer idea is foolish, there is no other way to put it. Medicine is too complex to just run an algorithm (even if you incorporate machine learning that takes time, human verification, and massive data sets). If someone gets in an MVC, has bilateral pulmonary contusions, gets admitted to ICU, tests positive for COVID, and dies of acute respiratory failure no one can logically argue that COVID did not contribute to that death. Likewise, we know that COVID contributes to coagulopathy, so if someone dies from DIC after trauma and has COVID it is not really possible to know if it contributed. (Standard practice is to error on the side of over reporting. This is why there are ridiculous vaccine reactions listed, it happened to one or two people--out of millions--within 72 hours of being vaccinated, so it is required to be reported. The truth is that it is too rare to establish a causal relationship between the two.) Computers would miss these distinctions (as will humans at times). The initial mistake was probably because some good idea fairy thought that using a computer and automatically matching lab test with death certificates was a good idea (conjecture on my part, but fits with my prior experience). Making the same mistake again runs the risk of compounding errors.
Yes, people don't know how to handle this. There is no comparison in living memory. In the real world many times you have to take the best information you have and act on it with no guaranties that you are correct. The important thing as that you are willing to change course as new information presents itself (I discuss this in my first post on this thread).
What we can say without question is this is way worse than the flue (perhaps because the disease is worse, perhaps just because it spreads so much better, perhaps a little of both). Last year the flue killed 20 to 40 thousand Americans. Even if you say half of the COVID deaths should not count that number has been surpassed in a matter of months. In 2018 (last year with data) 36,560 people died in car accidents. So, if you take the high number for flue and combine that with all motor vehicle fatalities, then cut the COVID death count in HALF, the COVID death count is still greater, even though it represents less than half a year of data. The only point of this is to put the numbers in perspective.
There are plenty of reports, from around the US and from several other countries, that anecdotally confirm there is validity to the numbers. These range from hospital staff struggling with having to decide who to save and who to let die to morgues filled beyond capacity with bodies, to shortages of equipment.
I think my ability to contribute to this thread in a productive manner is about spent, so I'm out.
