There were twenty more who were really dead of the plague in that parish, but had been set down of the spotted-fever or other distempers

From A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.  

The next bill was from the 23rd of May to the 30th, when the number of the plague was seventeen. But the burials in St Giles’s were fifty-three—a frightful number!—of whom they set down but nine of the plague; but on an examination more strictly by the justices of peace, and at the Lord Mayor’s request, it was found there were twenty more who were really dead of the plague in that parish, but had been set down of the spotted-fever or other distempers, besides others concealed.

Parallels with today:

Back to the issue of measurement and deceit.  Just as we have mixed dying with Covid with dying from Covid, in 1665, they accorded deaths to spotted-fever and other distempers which were actually plague.  The difference is that in 2020 we have been, intentionally or not, been inflating Covid-19 deaths and in 1665 they were hiding plague deaths but both doing so by omitting or using adjacent diseases.