Let's say you rob a bank, and you get in a gunfight with the police. If the police accidentally shoot a bystander, you are charged with their homicide. That's because you were the root cause of that person being shot.

The same goes for coronavirus deaths - ultimately the excess mortality is due to the virus, even when those deaths are not directly attributable.

We do the same thing when calculating hurricane death tolls - you don't have to be hit by a flying tree to have your death count as a hurricane death, you could just as easily die because the power was out and your ventilator failed, or because your insulin supply ran out.