>>Presently, just pick six random countries and you'd find at least eight counting methods, as many have changed them over time. Over here, some methods used to last just a few weeks, depending on the momentary, political, perceived needs.

I particularly enjoy the current UK effort with Covid deaths defined as "death within 28 days of a positive C19 test."

You'd almost think that "death" is something new and mysterious, so that people have to invent clever new ways to attribute it.

Of course the UK has the usual requirements for reporting cause of death by medical practitioner involved in care and/or coroner based on specific indications. Until now, it would be considered absurd for any peer-reviewed effort not to rely on these records that consistently show heart disease, cancer and respiratory diagnoses as the biggest cause of death.

With its various definitions, C19 mortality briefly surpassed heart disease and cancer in many jurisdictions during the pandemic, but overall heart disease and cancer have still ended more lives than C19 over the pandemic, and will continue to do so long after the pandemic is declared over. Perhaps we can expect heroic efforts to reduce heart disease mortality after this effort ends?

The other one to watch is the segue from mortality to positive test. Of note is that society never used to test vaccinated people in the old days when the goal was herd immunity, so there's not much precedent as to what a positive test after vaccination might actually mean. The best known example probably would be TB, where a post-vaccination Mantoux test would be expected to be positive, though that's a different sort of test.