I mean people will point to all-cause excess mortality as a justification to say "Coronavirus killed X million people" even if half of those were lockdown deaths.

You're trying to see something in the data that isn't there. Even if there was a spike in suicides, it would be a drop in the ocean compared to the excess deaths attributed to physical symptoms of COVID-19.

For what it's worth, Melbourne just went through one of the harshest lockdowns (in order to successfully eliminite the COVID-19 in the state), with no spike in suicide rates [1].

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...

If unemployment suicides maintain the normal relationship to unemployment rates, it’s likely that more people will die from suicides than from having covid as a primary morbidity.

But those deaths of despair are measurable and also comparable against “normal” levels, and can be easily separated from deaths where the cause is less certain but where symptoms may have aligned with potential covid infection. They track more than the body count. There will be studies of the mental health toll of the pandemic and its response. We won’t just tally those as likely disease.

Right. We'll have to wait but they will come to light. To be clear, excess could be due to:

1. COVID 2. From hospitals overwhelmed by covid cases 3. From behavior change due to fear of covid (not presenting w MI) 4. From policy changes made to combat covid (e.g. school close - diminished prosperity - lower LE)