From a medical and legal perspective death occurs when the heart stops.
As an aside, for purposes of organ transplant, brain death, i.e. a flat EEG is obtained and the family is consulted. An agreement is reached that the patient is brain dead, and harvesting can be done, the heart is still beating at this time.
Other than that exception, all patients die of heart stoppage. Pathologists then look at what caused the heart to stop. If a patient exsanguinates, loses all his blood , the heart stops from lack of oxygen due to the fact that there is no blood going to the coronary arteries.
Pathologists then attribute the death to the gunshot to the aorta that caused the blood loss. the patient having had a positive Covid-19 test, did not die because of Covid-19 rather the proximate cause was the gunshot.
Similarly people in nursing homes have proximate causes of death. Not to offend anyone, but a nursing home is a final common pathway to death, something will be the tipping point, be it influenza,
bacterial infection, or Covid-19.
I am not minimizing the deaths that have occurred during this pandemic, but an appreciation of what is a death is important.
Covid-19 is certainly a proximate cause of death in many patients. If anyone is interested, the mechanism of death by Covid-19 can be elucidated
