The government lied. It’s what governments do.
I am a little surprised by the push-back this story is getting here to defend the CDC who obviously changed some rules in the middle of the game. When you ask why, you suddenly become a conspiracy theorist.
Me thinks they do protest too much when they try to use the number of deaths per day in NY in the argument. There was no mention of that. The subject of the thread was the determination of the cause of death.