Context : Dr. Leana Wen, a physician many have accused of subverting her medical and scientific independence to politics, has repeated the claim that COVID-19 deaths are being over-counted. Although public health doctors have repeatedly said that calculating COVID-19 deaths can lead to some discrepancies when measured using different methodologies, those discrepancies shouldn't be used to diminish the true toll of pandemic deaths.
In order to deëscalate concern over the growth of COVID-19 deaths in the second year of the Joe Biden presidency, Dr. Wen is spreading confusion over whether the deaths are "from" or "with" COVID-19.
Beginning in the first year of the Coronavirus pandemic (SARS-CoV-2), the scientific media decried as a "conspiracy" theory whenever false claims were made that COVID-19 deaths were inflated. "The scope of the coronavirus's deadly toll is clear, even if the exact toll varies by a small fraction depending on the reporting system ... . The surveillance and vital statistics data provide a pretty good picture of how many deaths are attributable to the coronavirus, but they do not capture all of them, and that is where the final line of evidence come in : excess deaths."
(Source)Key : Claim and Findings are direct quotes from their respective sources. Any additional language, meant to provide clarity, if any, is indicated with brackets.