1/ About those New York City death figures: the city has now backdated them more than a month, to March 11. Yes, MARCH 11, on the theory that that was the first reported death from #COVID in New York. Also, no laboratory test needed: to be listed as “probable”...

2/ The death certificate just has to find the cause of death was #COVID or the “equivalent.” What’s the “equivalent”? Dunno, the city doesn’t say. Care to guess whether “pneumonia” or “respiratory illness NOS” might be the equivalent? Maybe @NYCMayor will tell us, but I doubt it.

3/ In other words, the only way even to guess how many deaths #COVID really caused in NYC last month will be to look at all-cause mortality and compare it to death counts of the last decade - and maybe to break down deaths from previous years by heart disease, etc...

4/ And see how much they are down this year (and assume that the undercount magically migrated into the #COVID pool). What a mess. But that hasn’t stopped Team Apocalypse from publishing entirely incorrect articles and tweets about the new figures: