True. We will never know the total number of cases. but people with the flu don't always get tested either.
However we will know for sure the number of US deaths and hospitalized because it's easier to track.
Not so sure about that, either. With lack of testing, there could be under-reporting of cause of death, especially the early cases. I can't imagine dead people are getting tested when live people aren't.
With hospitals swamped, I'm not sure those counts will be completely accurate. Close enough, imo.
Totally agree regarding flu. I don't think I have ever been tested but have certainly had it plenty of times. Never any Tamiflu or whatever the scrip is. I ride it out, unwilling to leave home.
So if I were to be a flu death, the cause of death could be cardiac arrest. Once I'm dead, I doubt anyone is going to seek the true underlying cause.
With any reporting, data entry and/or retrieval errors happen all the time. Close enough is horrific enough. I don't know what the dx code for COVIN is, and if it's not in systems yet, or not entered correctly, each hospital might be coding it differently. I did enough auditor reports for a hospital to have caught a lot of problems. Some were in the original data, some were in the original report the auditors had.
Some things are easy to count, some things aren't. In the midst of chaos, I don't think that 505 vs 500 is significant enough to quibble over.