[ninetyfurr]

They should quit padding the numbers if they're so concerned about minimizing fatalities.

A man gets hit by a bus and tests positive for Coronavirus, I don't care what the science has to say about it, that is not a Coronavirus death and you can't change my mind.

[ska]

Most places are if anything undercounting fatalities, not overcounting.

Do you have any evidence California is different?

[esoterica]

Do you think it's likely that 26,000 people happened to get hit by a bus right after getting diagnosed with the coronavirus?

4% of the patients diagnosed with coronavirus in the US have already died (and many more of the currently diagnosed patients are still sick and have not yet died but will in the future). It's wildly implausible that a meaningful fraction of 4% of that sample could have coincidentally died within a few weeks of getting diagnosed with the coronavirus, but for entirely unrelated reasons. If 4% of the population were dying every few weeks, humanity would be virtually extinct within a few years. Your "stat-padding" theory doesn't pass a basic smell test.

You can construct far-fetched pathological scenarios for how 1 or 2 people might be wrongly identified as coronavirus victims, but you can't explain away 26k deaths with baseless conspiracy theories.

[s1artibartfast]

2.8 million Americans die in a normal year, or about 7,500/day.

The risk factors for normal causes of death are basically identical to those of covid-19 ( age, vascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, ect). I think it is reasonable to wonder how many of the people who died from covid-19 were already loosing a battle with pre-existing condition.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

One pathological example doesn't make a trend.

[lsh123]

Not really one example:

N.Y.C. Death Toll Soars Past 10,000 in Revised Virus Count The city has added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronav...