1/ So I don’t want to go too far down the hole of arguing about #COVID death counts, but a reader pointed out a very odd change to the way Massachusetts is reporting deaths. Until April 6, the state reported deaths by day - that day, it reported 29. See below..

2/ But beginning Tuesday, April 7, the state began reporting backdated deaths. The explanation Tuesday was that the deaths included some over the weekend, which made sense. But yesterday’s report - 70 total deaths - includes deaths dated back to March 30

3/ Screenshot attached. Further, as you can see, in many cases the people who died were extremely old - in their 90s or even 100s - and there is no information about whether they had preexisting conditions or even if they were hospitalized.

4/ At the very least, this backdating makes it tough to tell what the mortality trend really is - if many of these deaths occurred last week, deaths might be dropping now even if they seem to be rising...

5/ Further, it highlights the uncertainties around dying WITH as opposed to dying OF Covid. Worst of all, given the very basic data missing here, if some of these people did not have lab-confirmed tests, it may not even be certain that they all died WITH Covid.