> I also suspect that if you do the simple calculation "excess mortality minus confirmed COVID deaths", this will be an overestimate, because many COVID deaths

> I also suspect that if you do the simple calculation "excess mortality minus confirmed COVID deaths", this will be an overestimate, because many COVID deaths are misclassified as something else, e.g. pneumonia. I think it depends on the country - a lot of countries are labelling any deaths with COVID symptoms as COVID (even though the symptoms are common to other illnesses like the flu). In these countries it will likely be an overestimate. > In Slovakia, the total mortality this year is lower than in the comparable period during previous years. Yes, COVID has been fairly benign in a lot of countries and a massive killer of the old in others.