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Or, what about hard-hit Italy much reported in the news? Leaving aside the high percentage of Italy's population that is in the "at risk" age range (over 23%), the nation counts all deaths from whatever causes, where there is a positive COVID-19 test.

Ever hear the old saying, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics”? We are living through this.

5 trillion scientists wearing white lab coats and carrying clipboards disagree with you. ;)

You folks have been quarantined too long. They don’t blame every death on Covid just because they were infected. Find me a suicide or car accident or murder that was deemed a Covid death.
I’ll wait patiently while you find it.

Getting Down to Cases

There is no such thing as a “case" of COVID-19. According to Merriam-Webster a “case” in medical terms is an instance of a disease or injury. “Cases” are subdivided for public health surveillance by the CDC into the following categories: confirmed, laboratory-confirmed, clinically compatible, etc.

COVID-19 is not a disease; COVID-19 is a family of viruses that may or may not cause illnesses such as the common cold, severe acute respiratory syndrome, etc.

What has this guy been smoking? I'm pretty sure, from just about every single article I've seen, whether layperson, idiot journalist, or actual doctor/medical field guy, that the virus family is coronovirae, or a bunch of coronaviri (there's only seven that hit humans, by the way). This particular one is Covid-SARS-2, and the disease it causes is called Covid-19.

Why would Covid-19 refer to SARS ('02) or MERS ('12)? What about the common cold? Those coronaviri were initially discovered in the 1960s. Oh, and what about this blurb from the CDC?
“On February 11, 2020 the World Health Organization announced an official name for the disease that is causing the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, first identified in Wuhan China. The new name of this disease is coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19. In COVID-19, ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona,’ ‘VI’ for ‘virus,’ and ‘D’ for disease. Formerly, this disease was referred to as ‘2019 novel coronavirus’ or ‘2019-nCoV.'”

So, while this guy really doesn't have much credibility, his point on counting "cases" is true. (Oh wait, I shouldn't put "cases" in quotes, because they aren't fake "cases", they actually are cases from a medical standpoint.) Different places have very different criteria for counting/confirming the virus, but that is something very difficult to do when an outbreak first starts, with a particulate that hasn't really been seen before, and is compounding by the virulence and magnitude of the infections. First you have to realize there's something new. Then confirm it's the same, unknown thing causing which cases. Then you gotta figure out what it is. Then develop testing that's cheap, reliable, and easy to manufacture/utilize. We jumped the first steps quick, likely because China already knew about it and was able to isolate and observe/track it quickly (while denying anything about it publicly).

But, yes, there's major differences between test-confirms, lab-confirms, and clinical guesses. The first two should be what we officially run off of, while the last one works for the flu. (Combined with random estimates from CDC anyways.) And, as others have mentioned, different countries will pad their numbers in different ways. Some may inflate them as much as possible to get as much help as possible (or like NY hospitals, get bonus funding per case), while others will hide the numbers to either prevent panic, or look better. Or, like China, just because it's what they always do.