Which is why I was trying to confirm. I didn't say cause of death.
I asked Pete if it was anybody who died who had a positive COVID test in the last 28 days.
It's a simple question, you still didn't answer it.
You know what's going to be interesting though, and just to be clear i'm a supporter of this metric and think its the most appropriate measure for covid deaths that we have and is statistically significant, is how this develops as we get more cases.
Noone is arguing the fact that using this measure includes a small number of people who have died from something unrelated but tested positive for covid in the last 28 days, just like it probably excludes people who have died from covid having tested positive 29+ days ago. The point is it's a proxy isn't it, and its statistically significant.
When cases absolutely skyrocket though, we will see this number go up from unrelated deaths. Using a ridiculous example to illustrate - if there were 35 million active cases of covid in the UK, 1 in every 2 deaths on average would flag up in this metric regardless of cause.
Not sure we will ever get to a level where it would obscure it though, so i just wasted 5 minutes writing this