I'd just like to point out that the "deaths from other things" is because covid wrecks your system pretty hard, even if you survive we don't know just how badly things can get, but we know BAD. If one were to not attribute deaths to covid-19, it would be saying that "nobody dies from AIDS, see the death cirt says pneumonia" or "knife wounds? It clearly says the primary cause of death was blood loss".

One of the phrases you may have heard during this whole thing is "excess deaths", which is another way they're trying to get at the real deadliness of this plague. This number attempts to compensate for the oddly high number of "pneumonia" deaths in outbreak locations where the bodies aren't tested. The problem with this one is that it's a really guess, a statistical guess, but still a guess.

teal deer: There is a goddamned mountain of bodies that wouldn't be there without covid-19, regardless of semantics

Yup, the CDC said that without COVID these deaths would have been avoidable so they are still COVID related deaths.

By that same logic, AIDS is harmless cuz AIDS doesn't kill you… the diseases AIDS invites that could otherwise not harm you do the killing.