And I'm asking that seriously, because somewhere someone lost their job last month, and had a heart attack. (probably several people given the immense number of layoffs)
What is the "cause" in that case?
I'd submit that their are many causes, and some are degrees-of-freedom away from the actual virus (like the heart attack above).
Statistics are definitely complicated, and assigning a cause of death is usually not easy (maybe for a gunshot it's easy), but what about the 90 year old guy with hardened arteries, diabetes, and cancer who dies of a heart attack while in the hospital being treated for the flu? Any yes, there are tons of COVID deaths like that (basically any nursing home death).
I'd bet that five years from now we'll still be arguing about this.
Which is indirectly because of Covid, that's my whole point.
The same goes for coronavirus deaths - ultimately the excess mortality is due to the virus, even when those deaths are not directly attributable.
We do the same thing when calculating hurricane death tolls - you don't have to be hit by a flying tree to have your death count as a hurricane death, you could just as easily die because the power was out and your ventilator failed, or because your insulin supply ran out.
I don't agree with the '6 cases' conclusion, but in this case, we do not have a universal accepted definition as a starting point. Instead, there is serious and valid question of how to evaluate causality when numerous factors contribute to an outcome.
Suppose we had packs of wild dogs roaming the streets. Sure, they'd maul some people to an early death, but a lot of those people had underlying conditions that made them unable to run as fast! We should only count the true mauling cases, the ones where clearly the packs of wild dogs were the only factor in their demise.