[christophilus]

It’s a thing in the States, too, and it makes it difficult to see the facts clearly. I have no idea why we’re handling the data on COVID so differently from previous diseases and pandemics, though I’d be interested to hear a plausible, non-conspiracy-theory explanation.

[lucas_membrane]

Cause of death is on the death certificate, but there is no law of nature that there must be exactly one cause. The assignment of cause of death is thought to be biased in many cases, perhaps even subject to political pressure. Maintaining consistency of public health statistics about COVID19 from one time to another (or from one locale to another) is very desirable to sustain the practical usefulness of the statistics in assessing consequences of public health measures. It may be reasonable to expect that classification of COVID19/non-COVID19 deaths by public health officials based on arbitrary but more objective measures (such as time period from COVID19 diagnosis to date of death, used in the UK) may improve the value of the statistic.

> previous diseases and pandemics

This is not a new problem. Life insurance companies believe that many suicides are misreported on death certificates as accidents because the person completing the certificate does not want to prevent recovery of insurance proceeds by the deceased beneficiaries; prevention of social stigma is also thought to reduce reporting of AIDS, STD's, suicide, liver disease, recreational drugs, etc as a cause of death.

There may be arguments for decades to come about who did well in controlling COVID-19 and who told the truth about it.

> I have no idea why

We are why. We are the subjects of both politics and medicine, a disconsonant duo locked in an awkward embrace, and they want to embrace us, gently guide us, and disturb us a little as possible, because we determine both the course of the pandemic and the will of the governed in the nations we inhabit, jostling about and wondering why.