The basic idea here is that we could be either undercounting or overcounting COVID-19 deaths I think the most likely explanation is some combination of the two
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Based on some very careful examinations of death reporting systems, we can say that there are probably some portion of deaths that are recorded as due to COVID-19 but were not caused by the virus
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However this is likely to be pretty modest in scale - mostly impacts high-income countries, and inflates the death toll by maximum 10-15%
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Conversely, there is strong evidence that in low-income places, the death toll from COVID-19 is undercounted, sometimes by a factor of 10x or more
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Even in high-income places, there is evidence from excess mortality calculations that some proportion of deaths caused by COVID-19 are being missed
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All in all, we may be overcounting COVID-19 deaths by a modest amount, but we are almost certainly undercounting them by a much larger fraction. The true death toll may be 50%+ higher
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The WHO provided an estimate that 10% of the world's population had already been infected by October 2020, what are your thoughts on that estimate?
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They didn't actually. One WHO spokesperson said in one interview offhand that it was around 10%, but they later clarified that they meant quite a bit BELOW 10%
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You do know that the WHO stated that a positive test is not required to be classified as Covid-19 related death, and that it should be counted independently of preexisting conditions that are suspected of triggering a severe course of COVID-19 ? You seem to underestimate that.
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