> To work out how many people died because of the pandemic, researchers model all deaths over the period and subtract a baseline of expected deaths (those that

> To work out how many people died because of the pandemic, researchers model all deaths over the period and subtract a baseline of expected deaths (those that would have occurred in the absence of a pandemic). What remains is deaths above the norm: a more reliable measure of pandemic-related mortality "deaths above the norm" is proxy for COVID deaths, because COVID is the only thing not normal about this time? /s