xollob: you are in my opinion absolutely on the nail in the respect that I would not be releasing information about a particular patient's death where there was not a wider public interest. That said, if I had an Ebola or anthrax patient... who could have contaminated many people who needed to know they needed to get tested and treated prophylactically to save their lives... the public interest would trump the patient's right to confidentiality. It would have to trump the patient's right to confidentiality. So as not to incur more collateral patient damage.
I should still not be releasing additional/extraneous information that was not necessary to inform the public of why they were at risk. And for what it's worth, I think more information has been released in this particular context, than needed to have been released. But some information did need to be released.
Again, we may politely agree to disagree.