To say car accidents are being counted as COVID-19 fatalities is absurd. They're not.
The deaths that are being caught up in the COVID-19 statistics are deaths directly linked with COVID-19 in some form or another - but the actual cause of death probably varies. Some people suffocate, some have organ failure, there are even reports of heart related symptoms that can lead to death.
I'm sure with people aged >80 or >90, this becomes even more difficult to answer; They may die with COVID-19, but they may have died with the normal flue too.
Anyway, some may find these numbers interesting, from our (Switzerland) Government:
Basically, yellow are confirmed cases, read are deaths and black is the CFR of that particular age-group. According to this data, 98% of all our 682 fatalities had a underlying health problem, that being high blood pressure (65%), heart related illnesses (56%) and diabetes (29%).
A few things to take into consideration:
- We currently have 22'000 confirmed cases
- The CFR in our country is currently at 3.7%, our deaths are still increasing (more so than confirmed cases)
- Switzerland has a very dense population, but we also have a very high testing percentage per capita
- Only people with severe symptoms are advised to come in and get tested.
- We've been in "soft lockdown" since roughly a month
- AFAIK our health systems had not been overloaded and we still have capacity
I'd also point out, that we still have many people in intensive care. There's no way to know if these people will make it or not. This may sway the statistic over time. In other words, older, more fragile people may have a smaller survival rate and die quicker relative to younger people who are brought into the ICU and fight the illness across days or even weeks until their fate is known.