That seems higher than I would guess, but lower than I thought you would guess. So even at the high end, and if you think perhaps 40% of COVID deaths are gray area (and so let's split that 40% and say that 20% are on the "wrong side" of gray), that would make 75% of a very large number of deaths fall into the "legitimate" zone.
> A better analogy would be if there were solid evidence of a provisional ballot cast in your dead great grandmother's name, and there just wasn't any evidence as to whether they counted it or threw it out.
I'll bite. Is that evidence of widespread election fraud? (And if so, perhaps we disagree on what "widespread" means, and whether fraud and attempted fraud should be treated separately.)
> But I think there were way, way more "gray area" cases that all got recorded as COVID deaths, e.g., people with advanced cancer who caught COVID and then died not long after.
> I have not [had experience with death certificates]
I think these two thoughts are related.
The death certificates I've done include multiple causes of death, usually a primary or immediate cause and secondary or contributing causes.
When a patient comes into my emergency department and dies of a heart attack, I am going to list the heart attack as the cause of death -- not the decades of untreated diabetes, uncontrolled hypertension, smoking, and obesity that some opine "really" caused the death. I may list those factors as secondary or contributing causes (if I know about them -- sometimes, as an emergency physician, I know nothing about the person's background and may not even have time to obtain any testing before they pass away).
I would bet that a very high proportion of well-meaning good-faith physicians would do likewise -- that is death from the primary or immediate cause of "heart attack." There is no dishonesty there.
When a patient with end-stage cancer comes into my emergency department and dies of COVID, I am going to list the COVID as the immediate cause of death, not the cancer.
When a patient with alcoholism dies in a drunken car accident, what should be the cause of death? I would argue "car accident," not alcoholism, or COVID.
However, it seems that many people who cling to "cancer" as the cause of death don't bat an eye when someone dies of a "heart attack." What about having end-stage cancer makes Monday-morning quarterbacks forget that having COVID is a legitimate cause of death?