They never really hide the fact that they were inflating the numbers of COVID related deaths. All along they have included COVID deaths if provable by lab verification or under assumption.
There have been tales of people dying from obvious other causes, but if they had tested positive for the 'virus'; then the death was added to the count of the pandemic casualties.
Seasonal flu, pneumonia have also claimed lives yet been tallied as COVID deaths. When all the added causes of death are subtracted and the lone data of a COVID directly related death stands, the number dramatically changes from over 150k to 9k. With the overwhelming majority of those who succumbed were of "advanced age". This takes a huge punch out of the narrative that we are in a deadly pandemic that requires lock downs and mandated masks or social distancing .