I think you are presuming that one hand of government knows what the other hand is doings. That has not been my experience.If that number is right..........We know they fudged the numbers early on to get that money from the Cares Act.......Everything was covid..........
I highly doubt that number. And most are in Nursing homes and assisted living homes.......where they have a ton of comorbidilities...........That is where the bulk died.
But when you change the definition to PRESUME and throw $77000 per patient via hot spots under the Cares Act you just can't imagine how many died for the money.
During the first two or three months of covid, just about everyone who tested positive and died were presumed to be a Covid death. The reason being we did not know enough about the disease to give hospitals guidance on Covid deaths. So the CDC put out a bulletin that said if doctors believed Covid to be the likely cause of death to mark the cause of death on death certificates as Covid but the death certificated was to be considered to be provisional. This lasted from the end of March to June 1 of 2020. These death certificates, about 70,000 were investigate by the U-S Dept of Health for 6 mos. At end this time periods the number of Covid deaths were increased by about 5,000. In other words the hospitals under reported Covid deaths.
However, the fact is that in the first few months of the epidemic doctors were making best guess on Covid deaths was all that was needed for certain groups to push the false news that the covid deaths have been exaggerated when the fact is we were under underestimating covid deaths. Even today this idea persists that any one with Covid and dies is reported as a Covid death.