and 2018 and 2017 and 2016 and 2015... and yet we had 700K fewer deaths in those years. Perhaps Covid was a particularly bad complicating factor for people with certain co-morbidities, but COVID was the difference, not the co-morbidity, or we would have seen deaths from those co-morbidities in prior years.

#2 is a fair point, but I've not seen anything that remotely suggests anything that approaches say 50K of additional deaths from the response to covid, let alone anything approaching 700K. Plus we KNOW about things that went in the opposite direction. For instance, in a typical year, we would expect 35K deaths from the flu. In the 2020 /2021 flu season we had 600. So the response to covid REDUCED deaths by 34K in the case of the flu.

#3 has the potential to be a fair point, but I think it's more of a dodge without basis. But if we see 500K+ fewer deaths than expected over the next few years, I will be the first to come back and admit that the covid deaths were simply accelerated deaths that were going to happen anyway. Or really, more like short-term accelerated... any death is technically an "accelerated death" as we all will die at some point, but if these were people that were all going to die in the next few years anyway, and covid just pulled those deaths into 2020/2021, then we should see deaths over the next few years be WAY down compared to the 2015-2019 baseline. I am highly skeptical however because of the high number of deaths for people aged 25-74. Most of these weren't people who were just going to die anyway. Plus among the public health experts that track this stuff for a living, no one has remotely suggested this as a factor .

#4. Tough to find this information for the US but I would love to see it. But we can look at countries that had very strict lockdowns and mask requirements and they had deaths per capita that were a small fraction of ours. The US has had 1,877 deaths per million. Canada 696, South Korea 40, Australia 35, and Singapore 6. I still think we had a better approach than any of those countries from strictly a lockdown perspective, but it would have been good to have a leader encouraging individual responsibility instead of trying to convince everyone it was a hoax, it would magically disappear, it's just like the flu, masks make you look silly, and ultimately convince people to not get vaccinated (why would you need to get vaccinated against a virus that is a hoax and will magically disappear). THAT was our greatest failing.