I've been loosely following and I can see this thread is getting contentious. I don't really have much of a dog in this race, and I don't really know where I stand, but I do have one thing I keep wondering about regarding your quoted statement:
Per this site, there have been 220,880 total tests in NY as of 4/2/2020 at 3:44 A.M. CST. Of those, 83,712 were positive and 137,168 were negative. Assuming tests were given only to those who were in proximity to a sick patient or to someone who presented similar symptoms, then well over 60% of all of the tests given for "those presenting symptoms" turned out to be negative for COVID-19. This means that something is giving people symptoms such as fever, sore throat, dry cough, etc... warranting a test which then becomes negative. Even if half the negative tests were because of "proximity" to a known COVID patient, then a quarter of all tests are being done for similar symptoms that result in negative COVID tests. We don't know if the people testing negative for COVID-19 are also dying. Maybe they have a bad case of flu that's causing their symptoms and they die from that... Maybe it's just seasonal allergies and people are panicking. We just don't know except there are sick people testing negative for COVID-19.
I think what some of the folks on here are trying to say is that whatever that something is, if it's present in someone with COVID-19 and that person dies, they're automatically chalking it up to COVID-19. I mean, let's be honest... Let's say you're 75, catch the flu, get raging sick from it and are also exposed to COVID-19 but are essentially asymptomatic to it. You die. Your death will be chalked up to COVID-19 no matter what - simply because you tested positive. Maybe that's a rare case, but we just don't know. On the flip side, you have symptoms, get tested and COVID-19 is negative. You die. You're not even being tracked at this point. You're not even a dot on a John Hopkins map anymore.
Another example is Ohio. From the same site, as of the time of writing this, there were 29,539 tests given. There are only 2547 positive tests. That's basically a 10% hit ratio on people with symptoms IF the state is following CDC guidelines. There are many other states like this where the positive tests as a ratio of total tests are in the 1:10 ballpark. Maybe that's because it's early on still. I don't know.
I'm tired and my brain keeps telling me there are some Bayesian statistics for this, but it's been too damn long and I don't care to research it that much for the benefit of an internet thread.
Anecdotally, I had three co-workers fall ill over the course of the last few weeks. Each time, we waited with bated breath (lest we all have to quarantine for 14 days) as we found out they had all the classical symptoms: dry cough, fever, body aches, etc... and were asked to take COVID tests before returning to work. Each time, they tested negative. Turns out... One guy was actually getting chickenpox for the first time in his life. He's 47 and it has completely fucked him up. Another guy had the flu, and another guy... Let's just say he's a bit of a drama queen.
Again, I'm sort of COVID agnostic in that I don't know what to believe anymore. I do firmly believe that COVID-19 is causing people to get very sick in some cases, but I do also believe that the data we're basing massive decisions on is absolute shit. The media has turned this into an End Times scenario for sure. Governments are panicking. Businesses are failing. It's scary times. I just hope we don't look back on this and say, "Oh man, we cried wolf too loudly," because then no one will ever listen when the 40-50% mortality rate killer comes.