The journalist is attributing his conclusions to the government, which is inaccurate.

In cases of comorbidity, it's possible covid was the "straw that broke the camel's back".

When we ask if COVID killed somebody, it means ‘Did they die sooner than they would have if they didn't have the virus?’”. Even a person with a potentially life-shortening condition such as heart disease may have lived another five, 10 or more years, had they not become infected with COVID-19.

Similar to cancer, many cancer deaths are related to secondary complications, but it's generally accepted that those secondary complications either would not have arisen or resulted in death if cancer wasn't present. Perhaps those deaths should also be re-framed as dying "with cancer" rather than "from cancer".

If COVID exacerbated their symptoms from their comorbidity, it's probably accurate to say that COVID indirectly caused their death.

If they were smacked in the head by a hammer while COVID positive, it's not accurate to say COVID indirectly killed them.

I don't think it's quite as cut and dry as you're making it, but I do think/agree that the numbers were artificially inflated incorrectly. Hanging your hat on this 3000 number seems as dishonest as reporting murder victims as COVID victims.

The reality is somewhere between the two I'd say.

Its almost as if cutting hospital staff hours in half, shutting down entire hospital wings, and monetarily incentivizing hospitals to count deaths towards covid was a tactic to scare and manipulate people right before major elections around the world to creat an opportunity to get sheeple to give up their rights willingly....

How did I link it if they didn't update the website to include the report? The link and report I shared are directly from the ISS website.

Can you relate any of this to either the ISS report(s) or the article in the OP?

Immediate cause vs. underlying condition.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/blue_form.pdf

For COVID, any death with COVID appearing anywhere on the death certificate is being counted as a COVID death AFAIK. I think that's wrong and that it falsely inflates the numbers.

If you're immuno-compromised from other underlying conditions, a relatively simple flu bug can be fatal. The flu bug itself isn't the reason you died though... it's your frail health. If such a bug sweeps through an intensive care unit, a bunch of people could die. However, a healthy person would have no problem defeating the flu bug. So the dilemma is whether or not to report that flu bug as a deadly bug. I think not because it poses no risk to normal folks. Only those already very sick are susceptible to it. Should society be locked down for 18 months to protect normal folks from a flu bug that kills almost nobody who isn't already sick?

So, my view is that COVID is killing mostly people with comorbidities. They are not COVID deaths. COVID just gave them the last nudge into the ground. Instead of widespread panic, vaccine mandates, and the trampling of liberty all made possible by highly suspect COVID death totals, the medical establishment should have been focused on finding out why the few reportedly healthy folks who died from it did so. I suspect all of them were immuno-compromised in ways the medical forms are not designed to report (e.g. drug addicts, frequently engaging in butt sex, etc.)

To me, that ISS report *is* admitting that the real death toll from COVID is much, much lower.

“People are not dying from, but with, covid-19.” “Deaths classified as from covid-19 result from largely false positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results,” “deaths are mostly from other causes and underlying conditions,” “death numbers are grossly inflated,” “there is no excess mortality compared with other years or months,” and this is “no different from a normal flu season.”


According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the total number of deaths with covid-19 recorded on the death certificate in England and Wales has now passed 100 000.The government’s daily press releases, however, report “deaths within 28 days of a positive test result”—a definition repeated faithfully by broadcast and print journalists and on social media.This approach probably under-recognises the real number of deaths from covid-19 by around 20%.

Having two parallel reporting methods is unfortunate as it plays into the “What are they not telling us?” narrative of covid denialists, conspiracy theorists, and lockdown sceptics.

ONS data are based on what doctors responsible for a patient in their final illness write on the death certificate to the “best of [their] knowledge and belief,” and they do not take into account how recently the deceased had had a positive covid-19 test result.I would advise anyone therefore to trust ONS data above the government’s reporting tool. In 90% of certificates where covid-19 is recorded, it does so in part 1 as the cause contributing directly to death.The Nuffield Trust has issued a similar note of caution about covid-19 death statistics.

In the first few months of the pandemic, access to covid-19 testing was scarce even for hospital patients who were clearly infected, let alone for those in care homes or private residences.Some death certificates might therefore have mentioned “covid-19” despite the absence of a positive result if the clinical picture was clear. In other cases, doctors might have been reluctant to put covid-19 on a certificate in the absence of a test even though the clinical picture was clear.

We have far better access to testing now, but systematic review has shown that PCR tests for covid-19 still have an initial false negative rate of 2-29% in people who then go on to test positive or develop clinical features of covid-19.

As we know, death certification is a serious professional duty. It is done with diligence and, for deaths in hospital, is usually discussed with a medical examiner (although this step was suspended for a few months in the first pandemic wave in early 2020).

The personal and professional consequences of fabricating or distorting certificates would be serious, and there is no mass conspiracy or incentive, financial or otherwise, to do so. Nor is it credible that such a plot would not have been leaked by now via disgruntled whistleblowers.

We sometimes certify deaths in patients who died from covid-19 or its complications well beyond 28 days. A study from Leicester University followed over 40 000 people with covid-19 discharged from hospital for 140 days and found a readmission rate of 31% (23% within 60 days), with 9% dying on readmission. Obviously not all those deaths were from covid complications, but it seems clear that many were accelerated by them.

Meanwhile, data are emerging that give the lie to the notion that covid-19 is no worse than or different to seasonal flu. The ONS reported in January 2021 that England and Wales had seen the highest increase in excess mortality in 2020 in any year since 1940. And a paper in The BMJ comparing 4000 patients with influenza and 12 000 with covid-19 in Wuhan, China, showed much greater severity of symptoms and much higher morbidity and mortality among those with covid-19.

Doctors treating patients with covid-19 over the past 12 months recognise a very different clinical syndrome in the sickest patients and a tide of cases of a kind, severity, and clinical course that we have not seen before. We don’t diagnose cases solely on the basis of PCR tests. Furthermore, PCR false positive rates are very low in people with symptoms and high pretest probability.

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n352

Did you miss the link? I posted the contents because many don't seem to look at things that don't support their narrative.

Still just gonna focus on me rather than any arguments? While flattering, it doesn't really contribute to the discussion.