When I conveyed the state Department of Health’s findings on the question of whether people were in the hospital because of COVID or merely while happening to test positive for it, one word in particular seemed worthy of a mental note for subsequent consideration (emphasis added):

According to Wendelken, “someone who goes to the hospital for another reason but is COVID-19 positive would not get admitted unless that other health issue was dire.”  After “a closer clinical analysis on the charts of a subset of patients,” the DOH came to the conclusion that the virus “played a role” in the conditions of 94% of patients testing positive for COVID.

Thus far, those of us on the more-skeptical side have been agitating for authorities to recognize that COVID is entirely incidental in some hospitalizations, but we shouldn’t forget that it might be a contributing factor, without being central. Stacey Lennox picks up this thread on PJ Media:

An exacerbation of a chronic illness is not a Covid hospitalization. If a person with diabetes goes into diabetic ketoacidosis because of a viral infection, you treat the diabetic complication. Hospitals frequently see these complications in people with chronic conditions with influenza, pneumonia, and other acute illnesses. This phenomenon is not unique to Covid. However, it seems everyone has forgotten.