> We simply don't have data or knowledge about what people did or how they behaved differently that might have caused a non-covid death to be reasonably attribu

> We simply don't have data or knowledge about what people did or how they behaved differently that might have caused a non-covid death to be reasonably attributed to covid. Which is somewhat tangential to my question. Disregard any formal attribution to COVID 19 as a cause of death - direct or indirect. Parent was suggesting all excess deaths are not just due to COVID (directly or indirectly). Sensibly allocating excess deaths to different categories is really the question here, and I'm wondering what caveats we should be careful about. From a terribly abstract perspective, total excess deaths within a population, year on year, prior and then during a global pandemic, should give us some useful baselines.