The thing these graphs show (and I agree with the criticism that plotting it in polar makes the excess volume look much larger) is that you can completely ignor

The thing these graphs show (and I agree with the criticism that plotting it in polar makes the excess volume look much larger) is that you can completely ignore why anyone died and still see a very clear pattern that 2020 stands out as very different than previous years, and the plot of the delta between 2020 and those other years exactly matches the numbers that CDC attributes to COVID-19. In other words, even if you question their categorization of deaths, it’s impossible to deny that something out of the ordinary caused 600k excess deaths in the US, and that “something” happened to coincide perfectly with the COVID-19 surges.