So Russia let the US policies about this matter define their counts? That’s your position? Ditto every other country of the world posting big deathcount numbers.
They are dead because the virus killed them. It killed them mostly because they were old. The old have comorbidities.
Those three sentences are in order of importance.
“So Russia let the US policies about this matter define their counts? That’s your position? Ditto every other country of the world posting big deathcount numbers.“
No, US policy didn’t dictate it - the same political dynamic exists everywhere.
Would-be tyrants always seek to discredit and undermine self-governance and constrict individual liberties. They never let a crisis go to waste - and they invent a crisis if none exists.
Fear of a crisis - or any existential threat - is the best way to demonstrate that self-governance is a failure - we need the state to protect us from ourselves - we need to give up our liberties.
This is the lie of Marxism, but it is as old as the human race. Liberty vs. tyranny - the same battle rages everywhere - not just in the US.
So yes, other central governments immediately understood the benefit of fear-mongering Covid - not just ours.
“They are dead because the virus killed them. It killed them mostly because they were old. The old have comorbidities.”
The second sentence directly contradicts the first sentence. The fact of co-morbidities means it took more than one thing to kill them. Which means that Covid alone didn’t kill them. Which means the first sentence is false.
Look, the government plays with stats all the time. They do something similar with alcohol and motor vehicle accidents. If there is an accident, and either party had a drink - it is reported as an “alcohol related accident”. It doesn’t matter how much alcohol, or even whether was the driver who caused the accident who had the drink - it all gets conflated together.
The negative result of conflating these stats is that we can’t know the more interesting and useful information: How many accidents or fatalities were actually CAUSED by alcohol abuse?
The “positive” result of conflating these stats is that the numbers will be exaggerated, and politicians can better exploit them to score political points.