There's a very unhelpful - and hurtful - conversation ongoing as to whether people are dying with coronavirus or from coronavirus. People involved in those conversations should step back and view this from another perspective because the distinction is meaningless.

A stage 4 lung cancer patient has a heart attack. What killed them?

Most of us have had someone we know die of cancer but cancer isn't always the end. Reduced ability to fight off infections, weakened immune systems - often 'the end' is something else.

And yet both in statistics and in life, we say cancer killed them.

For statistical purposes, this is vital for cancer research. They need to have a concrete grasp of what type of cancers are killing people, in what amounts, so they can come up with ways to lower the rates.

So, why not follow the same logic for covid19?

If a 90-year-old cancer patient is near the end of life, why are we counting it as a coronavirus death when cancer is the underlying cause?

The short answer is to try save lives.

By knowing who was coronavirus positive at death, authorities gain valuable tools - to trace contacts, to map the spread of the virus, to locate clusters and try to save more lives.

Whereas if a GP turns up at a house and puts 'pneumonia' on a death cert, this is less helpful.

But a short answer doesn't do the topic justice.

'Chicken-and-egg' scenarios - *with* coronavirus vs *from* coronavirus - is a discussion devoid of empathy.

Covid19 is causing people to die pretty agonizing deaths in cases, relative to what they might have died without it.

It's also expediting deaths of people who might only have had 2 months to live anyway but those few months can be the most precious time that families will remember forever.

When a loved one is dying, every hour you get to spend with them is priceless.

My dad was a big football fan. He was asleep from the morphine. The doctors in the hospice told me he had hours left and that I needed to get everyone together.

Next morning came, he was sitting up like Lazarus feeling great. Codding us.

That evening we watched England vs Italy in the World Cup. I joked he was going nowhere until the World Cup was over. The doctors said nothing much had changed. Days passed. Uruguay vs England on the telly.

"Rooney is so over-rated" as he sips on a beer in bed.

He made it all the way to the semi-final of the World Cup before he died. I reckon he'd seen enough after Germany beat Brazil 7-1 - but those memories I'll remember vividly for all of my life.

That's what coronavirus is taking from people.

So if you find yourself debating whether people are dying from coronavirus - or just with it and would have died anyway - you're missing the point:

With or from is inconsequential.

'How' is what matters.

We are all going to die anyway. Very few of us will die alone like this.