Quote:
Originally Posted by Velvet
Testing rate doesn’t influence death rate. Dead is dead.
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In one important way, testing is important. While dead is dead, determining the cause of death is important, obviously, to ascertain the extent of disease and its lethality.
In NY they are now recording as COVID deaths all cases where the MD or coroner includes COVID on the death certificate as proven or if in the judgement of the person, probable. This captures not just test positive deaths.
However this is not how every location or state is reporting their deaths. AFAIK Florida is only reporting test positive deaths as COVID. So if you die at home, untested, or a nursing home, untested, or in a hospital not yet tested and you have COVID symptoms but not proven, you are not a COVID death. While now there is an effort to
test every employee in nursing homes, this is new. And it does not include patients.
So dead is not simply dead when you are discussing COVID deaths.