Mike Powell to Anton Shepelev:

> > To decide whether it is correct or not, one has to ask the
> > doctor: would that person have died then and there of their
> > heart or kidney condition had they not contracted COVID-19? If
> > the answer is no, then we may blame COVID-19, as the the major
> > cause of death. Since the new virus is more deadly than flu, it
> > is only meet to give it more weight over other factors in the
> > attribution of death.
>
> Agreed.  Some places are doing it that way, while other countries
> (and US states) may be counting anyone who tests COVID positive,
> even if their death was caused by something completely
> unrelated.  Fall off a ladder, hit your head, die of trauma, test
> positive, dead of Wuhan Coronavirus.

I believe the decision intends to provide a simple estimate that
cannot err on the lower side, for it is by all means safer to
overestimate than to underestimate the death rate.

> > Any death is due to the failure of one vital organ or another.
> > Both seasonal flu and COVID-19 cause death by agrravating a
> > pre-existing weakness in the organism. If one follows this
> > logic of yours to the end, one shall conclude that no one has
> > every died by flu or by COVID-19, which is, obviosly, wrong.
> > Everybody dies becuase their brain stops working!
>
> True.  At least early on, everyone dying of the virus was
> actually dying of a complication from it... pneumonia.

And now they die (or are dying -- which is correct?) from a wider
variety of complications.

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