It is; but almost certainly in the right order of magnitude. To assume otherwise would require two things: 1) a drop in the death rate in order causes of death (none have been observed) and 2) 1 million doctors and 2.83 million nurses all engaged in a massive conspiracy along with other hospital staff, families of victims, coroners, medical examiners, and others, all spontaneously deciding to conspire to commit medical malpractice and fraud. This is a conspiracy that would require half the country, crossing all political lines, and with no reasonable expectation of any benefit to any of them.
"you have made the argument before that if a secondary or tertiary cause of mortality on a death cert is covid, that alone substantiates its inclusion in the covid numbers"
I have not. What I have stated (correctly) is that the US Standard Certificate of Death contains 4 lines for the cause of death in Section 32 Part I which are used to establish the chain of morbid events leading directly to death. Further, in the CDC's Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19), it's reinforced that only the events directly leading to the death of an individual may be placed there, and that both the immediate and the underlying cause of death must be established to the best possible degree of medical certainty and using laboratory testing to confirm any COVID-19 diagnosis whenever possible. It's right there in the links.
"using that logic, my father would have died from ischemic cardiac disease, aka atherosclerosis, which I and millions of others happen to suffer from, and on a daily basis is perfectly manageable...IOW, contributory, not causitive; my father actually died from hypoxia..."
Any significant conditions which contribute to death, but which are not part of the chain of morbid events leading directly to death are included in Part II of Section 31 on the US Standard Certificate of Death. Again, see the links above. This is how this has worked for decades. Nothing has changed about this process with COVID-19.
"what is equally absurd is the fear level that the medical community has ginned up over this virus, presumably in an effort to increase its influence in societal engineering"
The fear has been drummed up by the media and the Democrats. The media drum it up to sell ads. They're a business. They don't care about informing anyone. Any time a plane crashes anywhere in the world, CNN drops all coverage of all other news to focus on nothing but that to convince you that every plane ever flown is about to come raining down from the sky at any moment. Fox News got on a tangent about child kidnappings (another rare event) that had a lot of people calling Fox News "The Missing White Girl Network".
Meanwhile, Democrats wanted to scare people into thinking COVID-19 was the end of the world and that President Trump was incompetent to deal with it. When President Trump's Operation Warp Speed had 3 vaccines lined up ready for FDA approvals, how fast did Pelosi and Cuomo and the rest of the Democrats suddenly turn into rabid anti-vaxxers? Talking about how "rushed" they were and how "dangerous" and such. About how they wouldn't trust any vaccine approved by the Trump administration. And blah blah blah. Newsom and Cuomo went as far as to say they wouldn't allow the vaccines in their states until they had conducted a complete independent review of them. Why? Because if COVID-19 is the end of humanity and President Trump got safe and effective vaccines done in record time, President Trump is a hero. Whoops! So flip the script; "vAcCiNeS aRe BaD nOw!"
But what happened after election day? Where are Cuomo and Newsom with their independent testing? Oh, suddenly it's all about how fast can we get some of that vaccine? Typical.
‘1 million doctors and 2.83 million nurses all engaged in a massive conspiracy...’
nonsense; all it would require would be a contingent of prominent and socially visible medical personnel appearing continuously on public airways and newsprint to misrepresent this virus to an infantilized populace so as to control the remediation narrative...
‘Any significant conditions which contribute to death, but which are not part of the chain of morbid events leading directly to death are included in Part II of Section 31 on the US Standard Certificate of Death...’
you missed my point; I use the example of my father to point out the generic quality of the underlying cause of ‘ischemic caridiac disease’ and how it isn’t normally a cause of death, but a symptom...I suspect the same generic value of covid cert inclusion...
‘The fear has been drummed up by the media and the Democrats.’
while that is true, it is also true that not all state health secretaries, who are all over TV and radio, are dems nor media characters...these ubiquitous health officials, with the blessing and backing of hospital and medical center personnel, are practically radiant on the TV screen while announcing their mask mandates and the montonous infantile reminders of the three W’s, wear, wash, and wait...