And…?

Obesity and diabetes are underlying medical conditions, but when an obese person dies from a heart attack we don’t say they died of obesity, and when a diabetic dies from kidney failure, we don’t say they died from diabetes, even though these underlying conditions made them more susceptible to their ultimate cause of death.

Depends how long the “snippet” was in relation to the total length of the sermon. A short piece of the sermon (ex:. a couple of minutes out of an hour long sermon) would generally fall under the “fair use” doctrine.

No way? Testing positive for Covid-19 while exhibiting symptoms of Covid-19, like respiratory failure, clots in the vascular system, etc. could clue them in.

There is no doubt that in some places, some deaths have been attributed to Covid-19 when they shouldn’t have been. For the first few months, England was counting at least some deaths of those who had recovered from Covid-19 weeks before in their numbers, but they removed them later after identifying the problem with their counting criteria.

Ultimately, though, the final death toll will be based on the number of excess death during the epidemic as calculated by the epidemiologists, like they do to calculate the mortality figures for flu season, every year. That will take care of the “there’s no way of knowing the outcome” issue, since we know on average how many of those people would have died in a normal year, and they will not be included in the excess deaths caused by the pandemic.

In the end, though, the CDC always has to raise the mortality figures for flu season by a considerable amount — i.e. in the order of 20% or more — to properly account for the excess deaths that occurred, so there is every reason to expect the final Covid-19 tally will be raised significantly once all the calculations have been done.

No doubt Trump and his loyal deniers will whine about the deep state again when it happens. It’s funny how such a non-controversial process (estimating the deaths from infectious diseases) can suddenly turn into a left-wing deep state conspiracy theory when the numbers don’t back up their nonsense claims.

And…?

Obesity and diabetes are underlying medical conditions, but when an obese person dies from a heart attack we don’t say they died of obesity, and when a diabetic dies from kidney failure, we don’t say they died from diabetes, even though these underlying conditions made them more susceptible to their ultimate cause of death.

Derek has elevated incoherence to Trumpian levels.