Also if someone dies of a heart attack, cancer, old age and they have covid, the death is recorded as a covid death
A lot of noise about death counting and certainly not being done well in England, but we will have to wait for the Inquiry to learn more. The law that applies to doctors, who are the only people except coroners that can sign death certificates, has not changed so I would be acting outside the law if I put the cause of death as covid when it was a heart attack. However if the covid caused a heart attack I should put covid as a cause on the death certificate. The death certificate is my diagnosis and not the laboratory findings. So I would like to know whether someone civil servant is counting a death as covid when the doctor hasnt put covid as the cause but merely listed it under 'other conditions' which were not a cause of death.
The only sensible way for this to go is to isolate those over 70, or with an underlying health condition that puts them at risk.
Although these are the groups most at risk you cant assume others can just ignore the pandemic. Children under 11 can, and many young adults remain asymptomatic, but we know a significant number are pauci symptomatic. A recent paper from the Netherlands has shown 90% of these may have difficulty with daily activities three months later. The under 70s may not often die but they may have long and possibly lifelong disabilities.