I will share you a little anecdote called the Cobra Effect. It is quite simple, a village in India was infested with Cobras. The townspeople went to the Brits, who were ruling India at the time, and demanded action. The Brits sent some people in and came up with a plan. They said, we will offer a bounty for all dead cobras brought in. Sounds logical, right? In the beginning it seemed to work, huge numbers of dead cobras were brought in, the townspeople were paid. But after a while, the government became a bit skeptical, you see, the enterprising townfolk decided to breed themselves some cobras, kill them and bring them to the government to get paid. When the Brits figured this out, they nixed the program. All the smart townspeople had to set the snakes free and the infestation problem was worse than ever.
Same sort of principles work with COVID, the government is paying a premium for patients with COVID, since hospitals are not able to do elective surgeries and such, the only way they can stay afloat is to inflate numbers. If you have COVID when you die, then you died from COVID.
There is a family in Oklahoma fighting this right now. Their father died, in hospice, from Alzheimer's. He went to the hospital at some point before he died and had a cough and was short of breath. The doctors treated him and sent him home, a few weeks later he went back to the hospital because he had stopped eating etc..no signs of COVID, normal breathing and no cough, doctors sent him to hospice where they listed him as COVID patient because he had it in the past. When he died a couple of days later.....cause of death listed as COVID.
Don't tell me this is the only case like this. The numbers are inflated.