It is largely why I have ignored cases from day 1. Dead is dead, Excess Deaths of all causes are good quality.
Everything else has questions and doubt. Is that a false positive? Why did he go to get tested? Was he tested only because he broke a bone and needed the hospital?
But dead is dead.
If you look at all deaths, we had nearly 3.4 million in 2020. From 2017-2019, we had 2.8. So far it looks like we will hit 3.4 again for 2021, maybe more. In 2020, we weren’t hit until March. That’s not the case in 2021.
Not bad points.
However, in an entire country, barring major policy or testing shifts, “errors” will largely factor out of cases’ curve velocity and acceleration, leaving those as useful information. Large changes in CFR are also useful info. For example, if infectiousness / case numbers surge by 10x with a new variant, but fatalities only increase 2x, that’s very useful info.