Dr. Birx, FWIW, says to discount 25% of what CDC publishes. Over the past six months we have all seen that their level of incompetence is laughable. To me they’re no more credible than WHO.
The guidance document on how to record deaths seems very reasonable to me, but I have no idea if they do any sort of enforcement to ensure coroners and medical examiners are actually following that. And if they do any enforcement, I also don’t know how much they do or how good it is. I doubt they really have a stick to swing if somebody’s doing things incorrectly. I don’t think the CDC controls funding to any state health department or hospital. I would imagine that’s all HHS and NIH. So at this point, the best I can really do is skip the media hype and go to the official sources of information.
I wish the hospitals reported their information in a more granular way (for example, who is hospitalized FOR COVID-19 vs who is in the hospital for something else and tested positive for COVID-19).