I know all about 'hot' fusion. I am aware that you get more energy out then you put in in fusion processes. That's the whole point. My point is that in order to cross that threshold for fusion to happen, your atoms need a lot of energy. Less then you will get out from fusion, but still a lot. My bone to pick is that many people hear cold fusion and think room temperature with no energy input. There will be energy input for fusion to happen. Maybe it comes from big lasers, maybe lattice relaxation, maybe Ohmic heating, but it's coming from somewhere. The cross section for DD fusion is not even on the graphs until 10 keV. Thats 100,000 K. To put things in perspective, the plasma in a fluorescent light is probably somewhere around 11,000 K and it's nowhere near fusing. I'd call that hot, even though it's not really hot for a plasma.
I agree that there might be an interesting physical process going on in cold fusion. And it might be actually be fusion. But not as an energy source - as you said, 'a very few' atoms. If you want enough atoms participating to make an energy source, you are going to have to give a large population of them a lot of energy.
If you are fusing DD, you will have either have neutron production (He + n), or tritium production (T + p) - DD fusion doesn't always produce neutrons.