TomD
I actually don't know anyone who has died of COVID. The death stats is based on the idea they are always BS. Not that there is some conspiracy on COVID. I first got into this about 20 years ago on bicycle helmets when I tried to find stats from the government on the number of cyclists killed in accidents, and the number by head injuries. It turned out head injuries were a catchall favorite on death certificates. So for instance if an individual is decapitated as his body is driven over from a semi and his head is finally popped off, it is allowed to put on the death cert that the cause of death was a head injury. So it made it difficult to arrive at stats that would support bike helmet use when the actual underlying numbers were responding to what was the easiest legal cause of death. It should be obvious that the main concern in death numbers across a province by all causes, is not bike helmet use policy.

I do actually get an avalanch of numbers from a second cousin who does this kind of thing professionally, so I see charts gallore. They are fairly clinical. Most of what I have seen on the stats i just discussions of the stats. Also, the problems may not exist where you live. But where I live a big problem is policy is driven by the number of infections, while we ramp up testing astronomically. We actually mostly ignore underlying patterns in deaths. And even in hospitalisations. We locked down Ottawa at a time when the hospitals were "empty". I don't get the feeling policy is really data driven.

Throughout the pandemic there has been constant informed questioning of what is happening with the mortality numbers. Why would there not be. We are supposed to trust the science, why do we expect there will be no questioning of it. At the highest level (obviously not ours) this is what peer review is all about.