While reduced traffic and thereby fewer road accidents, fewer transmissions of influenza etc possibly reduce the number of fatalities. This goes both ways and getting really meaningful numbers might be quite hard.

And comparing statistics from different countries is difficult under the best of times due to differences in definition, reporting quality, etc.

For something as polarized as COVID? Good luck.

there are additional deaths that can be attributed to the lockdown, as well as some reductions in deaths that can be attributed to the lockdown. but neither are anything close to on the same scale as people actually dying of covid.

there's obviously some margin of error, but it's pretty safe to treat the unattributed excess deaths as being caused by covid-19

+1 - countries that introduced strict lockdowns early on have no excess deaths.

If those were significant, we’d see an uptick in countries that introduced restrictions early on and avoided the epidemic.

In Poland we had quite serious restrictions introduced very early on and we don’t see any excess deaths in the stats - march and april were actually below average in terms of mortality. Similarly in other countries with similar scenarios.

> suicides and untreated medical conditions during social distancing and lockdowns can increase the number of deaths.

And why did we need social distancing and lockdowns? was it just to have people blow their heads off?

Obviously it was intended to combat the virus. That doesn't mean it's the only, let alone the best, course of action.

And even if it was the best course of action, that doesn’t mean there won’t be unintended consequences.