You're right. At one point I read it was as high as 10 years that the average person who died of covid could have otherwise lived on for. I suspect that number has changed a few times over the pandemic, but even a few years more years with a loved one is priceless, losing anything close to a decade would be a massive loss.

I’m sure George Floyd would have lived a little longer if he wasn’t Covid positive when he died.

It doesn’t matter anyway. The data required to support our mitigations stopped mattering a long long time ago. ..Sometime back when the “4% kill rate” predicted by the imperial college paper turned out to be very very wrong and when all those temporary military hospital things got closed because they weren’t being used. That might have been a good time to reevaluate what the fuck we were doing but instead of celebrating the fact that Covid wasn’t nearly as bad as predicted we just doubled down for a year and a half more instead.

Honestly it’s best to just take the numbers at face value and assume any overcount is balanced by undercounts.

> I’m sure George Floyd would have lived a little longer if he wasn’t Covid positive when he died.

George Floyd tested positive for COVID19 before he died, but its not listed in his cause of death.

Is that really the best counterexample you've got of an improper death certificate?

https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/711012da318e49...

There's not even any COVID19 listed on here.

I said most, not all.

If 95% of people died from covid, and 5% died with covid, then basically for all intents and purposes and how we use this data, the distinction is irrelevant.

I agree. I just take the numbers at face value. Trying to suggest they are under or over counted is a fools errand. It will take decades of distance from this event for cooler heads to tally up what really happened.