@Steve this article seems to call into question, the accuracy of Mexico's reported COVID19 updates. If the article is correct, this suggests, by extension, that other countries may also be under reporting the actual COVID19 death toll ... including, and not limited to, our home country, Canada. Mexico City’s coronavirus deaths are triple its official toll, report suggests
Well I can tell you one country that isn't under reporting the deaths. America. It's amazing Corona came along and 90+% of all other deaths have stopped, and now we only have Corona fatalities. So either people are waiting to the appropriate time to die once the Covid restrictions are lifted, or Corona actually cured everything else. It's not like there is a financial incentive to report deaths to corona or anything, hospitals systems aren't struggling and looking for methods to recoup income.
It’s interesting because most of the people I know (no proof) that the United States is over reporting. In that if someone has stage 4 cancer and and gets Covid and dies they report that as cause of death. In actuality the cancer was the cause of death and Covid was possibly a factor. Again speculation on my part but if you have Covid and are killed in a car accident is it Covid related. I am not saying people are not dying from this I just feel we are not getting a clear picture here. So which is worse over (doom)or under reporting (false sense of security)?
If a Covid19-positive person is killed in a car accident in the United States, do you really believe is it counted as a Covid19-caused death for the daily reported statistics? I don't know the statistical data criteria, but that seems to be a stretch. Would imagine there must be CDC or other regulatory guidelines as to which deaths actually get counted as Covid-related or not.
Google the Colorado story in which the state just revised their covid deaths downward by nearly 25 percent because they were caught calling a death covid of a 34 year old man who actually died of alcohol poisoning. His BAC was .55. I'm not sure how you can drink that much, roughly 2 fifths of whiskey in an hour. Other states have revised their numbers downward as well. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that 94% 0f the covid deaths in New York had a co-morbidity. So being hit by a bus but having covid being counted in the numbers is not much of a stretch. Remember, if it bleeds it leads.
There is an incentive here to code deaths as Covid. Those hospitals get addition funding if they have a Covid death. So yes I believe that. It’s crazy.
As for CDC guidelines, the CDC changed the rules for covid deaths from requiring it to be a significant contributing factor (for the flu) to just having covid or even presumed covid no test required. You can look this up on the CDC website. I have a personal experience with this. My son in law's father passed away in March the hospital wanted to call it covid without a test unless the family paid for the test to disprove it (Medicare won't pay for the test post mortem). His father was 76 had diabetes, heart disease, and advanced prostate cancer. He also had a history of refusing to take medication. The family paid for the test and it came back negative. Sorry for the rant, but the media is so dishonest and it doesn't take much research to prove they want to scare you to keep their ratings up.
Sorry to hear about your extended family experience. The premise of this thread is really whether or not the statistical data being reported by the govt is accurate, valid and reliable (yes, through the media, but it's not about the media's integrity itself, ratings or sensationalizing a story)
On it's face, that doesn't seem to make sense. It's like if a plane crashes and everyone is killed that some could potentially be counted as Covid-related deaths?? But in life, we all know that not everything makes sense. Some stakeholders may be driven by an agenda... hidden or not. Back to swimming in our own respective little fishbowls of happiness and physically-distanced isolation. Trying to adapt and get by.