@eladar saidThe WM site seems to be getting its numbers solely from State public health agencies as far as its US numbers. That seems as reliable a source as possible under the circumstances. But for reasons already given, their and everybody else's numbers are undercounts.
So do you know how those numbers were counted?
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@earl-of-trumps saidThere will always be statistical overlaps.
Nobody has accurate infection numbers. Impossible, just about. Death toll is even questionable. What happens when a person with heart and kidney disease dies while he has the virus? Well, now, they have even changed that. It is now counted as a CV death. It wasn't before.
And it can vary from country to country so their figures cannot be counted together. Not accurately, anyway
Someone with terminal cancer gets run over by a bus. Cause of death will be injuries from traffic accident.
If someone else gets infected with coronavirus while afflicted with a brain tumour and dies, cause of death will be COVID 19.
@eladar saidThese are published by John Hopkins University and they go to some lengths to make sure they are accurate. [1]
Is there a place that has accurate numbers concerning deaths? Or is it simply a guesstimate and no numbers are actually accurate?
What a Covid-19 death means depends on the authority making the statement. Public Health England count a death as being the death of someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 while in NHS primary care. So people in care homes who've died of covid-19 are not included. Some people who died will have died with covid-19 but not of it. See [2] for their methods. They are probably a tiny minority and will tend to reduce the under count from those who died of covid-19 but had not been counted as a case.
[1] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series
[2] https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/documents/PHE%20COVID-19%20Dashboard%20Metadata.pdf
@eladar saidNo, they don't.
In the US they are calling people cv19 death, simply for being dead. They combine both known to be cv19 with believed to be cv19.
@eladar saidAccording to CDC instructions they're only supposed to use COVID as a cause of death when there is a positive test or when there is a "reasonable degree of medical certainty."
@no1marauder
Yes they do.