You almost got there with your analogy, but not quite.
In reality it's more like what actually does happen in the real world. Pitt announces an attendance number based on how many tickets they sold, how many tickets they gave away to everyone that they give them away to, and sometimes an extra number of people added on to make the numbers look a little better. Then other people try to estimate how many people are actually there based on what they see with their own eyes. And then there is the truth, the actual number of people who entered the stadium and attended the game.
The death certificate count is the first one. Everyone knows that the counts are currently being overstated. Or, well, OK, anyone who is paying attention and has even a modicum of common sense knows that the counts are currently being overstated. The question isn't if, it's by how much. Much like Pitt game attendance. Sometimes Pitt announces a number that is pretty close to the truth. Other times they don't. None of us actually know by exactly how much, we just know it's happening.
If sometime next year it comes out that the total number of deaths this year is right in line with what would have been expected without the virus that doesn't mean that the virus didn't kill anyone, but it will tell you something about how far off the counts are. On the other hand, if at the end of the year the official count is 250,000 higher than what would have been expected (just to pick a semi-random number) and the virus estimate is 300,000 deaths then that would tell us something completely different.
Or we can all just bury our heads in the sand.