This is an excess mortality study, not going off of positive covid tests. And there's some meaningful research that suggests that those are relatively accurate

This is an excess mortality study, not going off of positive covid tests. And there's some meaningful research that suggests that those are relatively accurate because indirect deaths have gone up and down in a way that could be a wash (e.g. less traffic deaths because of shutdown, but more deaths from untreated illness because hospitals were overwhelmed). And this is Academic modeling - they don't have an incentive to inflate the numbers.