> This objectively happened.
Sure.
As the article we're discussing states:
"In the US, the “fudge factor” is 1.13, which means our best guess is that 13% more Covid deaths took place than were officially reported.
For skeptics who can’t believe that deaths were under-counted: both things probably happened. A few cases were wrongly counted, but even more people may have died of Covid at home, without ever getting diagnosed."
> This practice varied by state and tracking eventually broke out death with COVID vs death by COVID.
Which involves a somewhat subjective, error-prone decisionmaking process. Early in the pandemic, when the vast majority of hospitalizations-with-COVID were due-to-covid, it made sense to just do the simple thing and assume COVID caused all the deaths. After the death rate fell and this became extremely confounding, it became important to make this somewhat subjective decision.
(e.g. a guy rolls up with a "heart attack" and is COVID positive. Is it due to COVID? SARS-CoV-2 both causes cardiac complications directly and can reduce blood oxygenation / increase heart workload, so heart attacks are more common with COVID infection).