DrZoidberg
Contributor
"With Covid-19" basically means from Covid-19. There are basically three scenarios:
1) Trauma. This can kill someone who has Covid-19, but it would be noted as why.
2) They were near death anyway--but Covid finishes such people off before they die naturally. Thus they're Covid deaths.
3) They died of Covid.
On TWIV (This week in virology) they explained that Covid-19's impact on the mortality of older people isn't as serious as it is in young people. If we look at excess deaths Covid-19 mostly kills old people who would have died anyway. It's when we look at younger people, the excess death's from Covid-19 take a dramatic departure. Very few younger dead from Covid-19 would have died at that age. It's the dead among the young that makes Covid-19 a serious disease. But worth noting is that it's strongly correlated with over-weight.
If this were the case we wouldn't be seeing the huge numbers of excess deaths as it would simply be replacing one cause with another.
What? You are comparing not dying with dying. If people who otherwise wouldn't die are dying then, no, we are not replacing one cause of death with another.