> The only way the all-cause mortality numbers can be significantly wrong is if you suddenly find piles of corpses and skeletons around

Or if someone types a number incorrectly; or the reporting deadline changes for a month causing a few offices miss it and get counted in the wrong month; or if the Times writers didn't understand the specific categories being reported and missed some data...

Again, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying you're hanging your entire argument on one outlier number. And, statistically (see what I did there?) that doesn't tend to work out for you.