Let me be the first to point out that this article was refreshingly well written. There are so many people writing articles who are not good writers. It really detracts from the message.
So the thrust of this article is to point out the distinction of dying “with COVID”, as opposed to dying “of COVID”.
The argument begs for the statistics comparing total deaths from all causes in 2019 and 2020. I have seen some writers claiming that the overall death rate for 2020 was on a par with the death rate for 2019 through the month of November.
In many ways, the years are not comparable for a lot of reasons. But the speculation that COVID deaths are primarily due to other comorbidities would also explain another statistical phenomena which should require an explanation.
Look at the chart produced by the Arizona Department of Health Services:
https://www.azdhs.gov/covid19/data/index.php#hospital-bed-usage
It is a chart that shows overall use of ICU hospital beds compared to the use of hospital beds by those classified as COVID patients. There are two distinct peaks in the COVID numbers. The first COVID peak was in the first half of July. The second peak happened in the first week of January. Note that while the COVID use of ICU beds declined, the overall use of ICU beds did not subside by nearly as much.
While COVID ICU usage went from 930 to 115 to 1158, the non-COVID usage of ICU beds went from 614 to 1104 to 475. There needs to be an explanation of why non-COVID usage of ICU beds is the inverse of COVID usage.
The obvious explanation is that most of the people “with COVID” would have been in ICU for other reasons!
Really?
Now, that doesn’t mean those deaths don’t matter. Of course they do, but having a more honest accounting of who has actually been dying of COVID and at what level the virus was a factor, should have been fundamental, as it would have allowed us to better tailor our mitigation strategies to those demographics most at risk.