Years ago I used to work in this area and you should not underestimate what a difficult thing "cause of death" is. At the time we mostly worked with the initial condition which led to death. But in-between that and death could be quite a few other conditions. There are relatively few ultimate conditions. Trying to apply more than one just confuses the stats/people. But our approach had one case of "flat feet" as a real cause of death! You can't win.
That makes excess deaths valuable in the case of COVID.
That makes excess deaths valuable in the case of COVID.