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Undercounting COVID-19 Deaths

Why We're Almost Certainly Undercounting the Coronavirus Dead” — Vice News, 2020, 4:01https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugvxQNQU3tU

How many Americans have died from COVID-19? This video explains why and how we have undercounted coronavirus fatalities. Aside from the inherent difficulty of pinpointing a precise cause of death, how a death gets reported can differ depending on where it happens. After all, official figures are the product of numerous bureaucratic decisions on “what counts” as a virus-related death. These decisions vary between states and institutions. For example, Florida only considers the deaths of residents in their official count, and for-profit institutions like nursing homes may be inclined to deflate numbers given to officials and the media. To make matters more complicated, statistics on the virus have become politicized in the polarized American political system. Perhaps the only thing we can be relatively sure of is that even the best official numbers are less than the reality of the situation.