This isn't a math problem, it's not a stats problem. Realizing this abstraction of numbers is an error of reification. What's really worthy of consideration is

This isn't a math problem, it's not a stats problem. Realizing this abstraction of numbers is an error of reification. What's really worthy of consideration is the holistic picture which as of yet can not be resolved due to the ineradicable complexities of the evolving circumstances. The protocol to which we were subjected wrought untold damage and it's unclear in the long run whether the effects which evolved will have ultimately saved any lives. For instance the current geopolitical regime is certainly informed, in part, by the economic and political effects which originated as a consequence of and during COVID and shutdown mandates. And these economic effects have also affected policy and personal behaviors. It's a whole Pandora's box, and we won't be able to measure it with any meaningful resolution for... Probably decades... And even then there will be conflation because attributing overdose deaths to economic issues emanating from shutdown policies five years after the fact isn't a trivial argument to make, but nonetheless isn't an impossibility when considering actual human circumstances. And then considering what may have occurred on the obverse, where actually minimal intervention was taken, is also impossible to surmise. But I don't think it's unrealistic to have a meaningful boon. It may be the case that in spite of all the intervening circumstances that mortality would have ultimately been comparable due to the half-hearted nature which may have just been a collosal disruption. e.g. we hit a saturation point which lead to peak mortality and policy failed to modify the consequent mortality in the range beneath it. And yet another where minimal, targeted interventions a la the Great Barrington Declaration were deployed. And since nobody acts in isolation in a globalist society it will be yet more difficult to ascertain. So bandying about mortality numbers, I think, is insufficient when there have been so many consequences which have evolved from COVID policies, many of which are qualitative and difficult to quantify but have considerable meaning outside the silly abstractions we conjecture carry so much meaning.