>>for If a 98 year old dies with cancer, did the cancer kill him? What if a woman with diabetes is hit by a bus and has a stroke on the operating table?

The answer has been similar throughout living doctors' careers and is fairly consistent across the 1st world: there's a set of criteria including death after accident or during medical care that goes to the coroner. Otherwise the patient's attending physician used to be trusted to make the declaration if they're confident, else coroner.

>>The accepted answer (based on decades of experience and study) is: when in doubt, count it for all comorbidities. As numbers grow sufficiently large, outliers lose significance. New Zealand, with tiny numbers, probably vastly overstates their COVID deaths (40 instead of 50). But if you look at "excess deaths" for areas where COVID is endemic (basically everwhere else) the numbers suggest a vast UNDERcounting of COVID mortality.

Are you sure? Latest UK data reviewing over 100K admissions suggests that as few as 10% of C19 admissions are *because* of C19 rather than *with* C19 discovered when admitted for something else. Mortality may be similarly affected. Certainly I agree re excess mortality, though paradoxically several nations report negative excess mortality as C19 ravaged parts of the population during lockdown, often with rapid catch-up afterwards. It's worth considering that while cancer, cardiac and chronic respiratory are the big ones in the older age groups, accident is much more important in younger age brackets that also are less affected by C19. So if lock downs kept people out of their cars and bars, that can explain a *persistent* negative excess mortality since every 19-year-old who doesn't die in a car accident can now expect decades of useful life.

QALY (quality adjusted life years) is the epidemiological process of analysing and comparing interventions; lockdown is not looking like a very smart response from data finally starting to trickle out.

>>Anyways, this is something experts grapple with all the time and it's very mundane. But it has been sensationalized by pro-COVID provocateurs who spread FUD about the vaccine, masks, closures and everything else. Almost nothing these people have ever said about COVID was true, but when their lies are punctured they're quickly back up with a new theory, a new accusation and a new bogeyman.
>>It turns out that the greatest weakness modern man has to a disease like COVID is the ease with which we spread lies and disinformation.

People like easy answers, some people like to act censorious and morally superior, and cry-bullies who cry out in pain as they land each punch to the face have turned into a huge holier-than-thou Karen Army during this pandemic. We humans are a lovely crew. ;-)