The medical examiner thing seems totally fine—in this county they only see bodies that are sent for autopsies; i.e. something is fishy about their death. If you die in an ICU because of low oxygenation you don’t get sent to the medical examiner. If you die from a knife to the back and your family wants to argue that you died from COVID-19 then it makes sense for the medical examiner to want them to pay for it.
My mom, a Suffolk county based doctor who used to do autopsies
I’m not passing judgment on what the right thing to do is, but if the count is the proven cases only, this does result in a systematic undercount, right?
I think that is necessarily true, yes. A reasonable thing to do would be to report multiple numbers; “confirmed cases”, “suspected cases”, “estimated total cases”, each with a clear definition.
The medical examiner thing seems totally fine—in this county they only see bodies that are sent for autopsies; i.e. something is fishy about their death. If you die in an ICU because of low oxygenation you don’t get sent to the medical examiner. If you die from a knife to the back and your family wants to argue that you died from COVID-19 then it makes sense for the medical examiner to want them to pay for it.
My mom, a Suffolk county based doctor who used to do autopsies
I’m not passing judgment on what the right thing to do is, but if the count is the proven cases only, this does result in a systematic undercount, right?
I think that is necessarily true, yes. A reasonable thing to do would be to report multiple numbers; “confirmed cases”, “suspected cases”, “estimated total cases”, each with a clear definition.