I honestly don’t understand how this metric is useful.

It seems to just be a surrogate for ‘how many people who died knew they were at risk.’

If we have a virus with no symptoms and people just immediately drop dead, this metric would plummet since people who died weren’t expecting it.

If we all got cancer tomorrow from something released in the atmosphere, this metric would skyrocket due to us all seeking care… even if the cancer took a decade to actually kill anyone.

Covid seems more like the second case than the first… so of course the number went up.