Loose definitions and financial rewards for finding cases which can pass for Covid-19

I have commented frequently that our current data collection is so indiscriminate as to be meaningless in terms of modeling Covid-19. From Literally no one has any idea how many people COVID-19 has killed by Mike Thau which makes some of the same points I have been making. Items 1 and 2 are the same I have noted.

Item 1. If you die while infected with COVID-19, it gets listed as a cause on your death certificate, regardless of how mild it was or anything proving some other disease was the true culprit.

[snip]

Item 2. The CDC is explicitly directing doctors to list COVID-19 on death certificates even when no test was done as long as they’ve "assumed" the patient had it.

He points out something I had not yet noticed. Local jurisdictions are being paid to increase the count of Covid-19 cases regardless of whether they are actually real Covid-19 cases.

Item 3. Hospitals will be reimbursed for treating any uninsured patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Medicare will also pay out more for checking the COVID-19 box.