What about all the other big EU countries that have comparable death rates? The US actually is fairly unique in that excess mortality never returned to baselin

What about all the other big EU countries that have comparable death rates? The US actually is fairly unique in that excess mortality never returned to baseline. For example, Belgium is one of the European countries that was hit hardest: Mid-April, twice the number of people died per week than the average of 2015-19. The numbers were back to normal a month later (until the next wave hit in August). In the US, deaths also peaked mid-April. But while deaths were up by a factor of 'only' 1.5, excess mortality never went back to normal for all of 2020.