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I'm no kind of expert on medical decisions/statistics, but I can see a possible justification for this. The premise of "flatten the curve" is that there's only

I'm no kind of expert on medical decisions/statistics, but I can see a possible justification for this. The premise of "flatten the curve" is that there's only so much capacity in the medical system, and once it's used up, not just COVID-19 patients, but anyone who needs urgent hospital care, is going to be worse off. If the situation is bad enough in a place (like Italy) that a heart attack isn't getting its usual level of care due to the COVID epidemic...it seems reasonable to count that as at least a "COVID-related" death.

angry_octet 7y ago
Exactly. It's a very bad time to get cancer, an organ transplant, a heart problem or trauma needing ICU. The base rate of deaths from those conditions is well known, so in time we'll be able to see which patients died as a side effect of corona (due to being more vulnerable or due to a shortage of medical treatment). Obviously complicated by the lack of road trauma and industrial accidents, and increase in in-home causation due to being off work (and we shouldn't exclude domestic violence, alcoholism, anxiety, suicide, robberies).