My son would be proud. 
Yeah. I wrote a wall of text that explained in detail what my mother’s comorbidities were, how they interacted with covid, how she died, and why she unambiguously died because she caught covid.
Basically, everyone over a certain age has comorbidities. They have high blood pressure, or diabetes, or heart or kidney disease, or they are overweight, or they sustained damage fighting cancer, or … Most of them aren’t in the act of dying, at least, not any more than any mortal being is. It’s just that if something comes along and upsets their medical equalibrium, they are less likely to survive it.
That doesn’t mean that the covid, or fall, or car accident, or flu didn’t kill them. It just means that if their underlying health had been better, they would have recovered from that thing.
Yes, you did. And FWIW, I deliberately used a generic “patient” in explanation, out of respect for you. I didn’t want to ignore the real life impact of a specific person’s death in my attempt to explain something cold and clinical.
That said, of course I’m very confident that your mom’s doctors accurately assessed the situation, generic situations aside. Very sorry for your loss.
That makes you an outlier or an anomaly, but not much else.
Thanks.
Yes, she had a PCP, a hospice doctor, and a team of hospice nurses, all of whom thought she was dying of covid. She tested positive for covid on an antigen test the day she died. The course of her disease was pretty ordinary for an old lady with covid. The nurses couldn’t predict timing, but they knew what would happen next, based on treating lots of other patients who died of covid.
And i agree with your description. But it is a bit clinical. And there’s a lot of dismissive, “it’s only people who have other stuff” out there. It’s true that at this point, most of the Americans dying of covid DO have other stuff. But the other stuff wasn’t actively killing them, it just made them vulnerable.
There are, of course, also people who die with covid. The kid who bleeds out after an auto accident, and incidentally tested positive for covid is the poster child for that. Many states are distinguishing the “with covid” deaths from the “from covid” deaths these days. And hey, there are still a lot of deathsfrom covid. Thankfully, many fewer than before the vaccines.
I suspect that therein lies a tale (which I would be delighted to hear, if only to clear up the confusing image in my mind of you being in the habit of brewing tea in a teakettle, and possibly drinking tea directly from it).
I think maybe Chicago_Faucet was thinking that the word “comorbidities”* means “actual cause of death,” because it has the word “morbid” in it. 
I have a small cast iron kettle that came with a fitted tea strainer. Before i bought my electric kettle, i put the cast iron kettle directly on the stove to heat the water. When the water reached the desired temp, i turned off the heat, dropped the sieve full of tea into the kettle, and put the lid on it.
My husband still does this, even though i have moved on to the electric kettle. I now pour hot water from the electric kettle through the tea leaves into the cast iron one, using it as a teapot.
Either way, i pour the brewed tea from the kettle into a mug to drink it, but it holds more than a full mug, so i decant a mug of tea and remove the tea leaves/strainer, then return the lid, and let the remainder of the tea sit in the hot kettle until I’m ready for it. The interior of the kettle is enameled, so the tea doesn’t taste of cast iron.
I think pouring the hot water into a room temperature cast iron pot is cooling the water and making worse tea.
That said, you’ve demonstrated an aptitude for experiment and a willingness to reevaluate your beliefs so don’t take my word for it.
It is good form to warm up the teapot before starting the brewing process. It is not really that hard.
A cast iron pot will need more warming.
From vaccine denial to cast iron teapot warming tips – I love the Dope.
That discussion was when i was boiling the water in the cast iron tea kettle, and using tea that wants to be brewed hot. I’m now using teas that want to be brewed a little cooler. I’m lazy. Rather than pre-heat the kettle, i use water a little hotter than i want to brew it. I’ve played with the temperature and gotten temps that work well to produce tea i like with the equipment i use. 
That kind of research is pretty easy.
I promise not to question your tea brewing chops again. 
Hey, I believe in science. Question away.
If you are getting the tea you want, the rest is dross.
Wake up, tea people!
Might have gone with “teaple”
Considered it, decided that it didn’t work.
I guess it makes sense, since you only use the kettle for tea, and not to boil water for your instant oatmeal or cup o’noodles, or whatever.