by Bob Walsh
It is not an insignificant distinction. It seems that in Italy their reporting system was highly biased in favor of reporting deaths as caused by Covid-19, even if the dead person had one or more co-morbidity factors, such as diabetis or COPD. Now it seems that CDC guidelines in this country are moving in the same direction.
The distinction could have major downstream results, both in the general and in the particular. A person in a critical job who is marked down as dying from Covid-19 could end up with job-related death liability and costs. A person in a critical job who had diabetis or COPD and who died from those while they had Covid-19 might not have those costs attached, and the basic numbers could end up being skewed if this happened a lot.
I realize that it isn't always possible to say with 100% certainty what killed a person. Nevertheless we should strive to keep things straight for a number of reasons.
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