SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)

[haber]

No. I think people make mistakes, and I think that some of the reporting on deaths is inflated from the well-known issue of classifying deaths of people with COVID as "COVID" deaths.

But all states have different protocols for what counts as a "COVID" death, so I find it hard to believe there's some grand conspiracy to inflate the death counts. And even still, I think that any over-reported death are a minority. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/which-deaths-count-toward-the-covid-19-death-toll-it-depends-on-the-state/ar-BB12Is0x

Colorado counts "epidemiologically linked" cases which were only about 3% of the total. Ohio counts "probable" deaths, which were about 5% of overall cases.

In contrast, in Alabama 110 people had died (when that article was written) and tested positive for COVID, but only 73 were officially added to the death total.

So at most, it seems like anybody over-reporting is over-reporting by 5-10%.

Trump has called the death reports "very very accurate".

If you have actual data/sources that go against this, by all means shoot me a link.

But there's also very compelling data that suggests that COVID deaths are UNDER-reported, probably from lack of testing and from not testing soon enough. The Economist did a good look at this https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries