I would generally expect non-covid deaths to be down as is indicated by correlations between mortality and economic decline, the fact that suicides haven't trended substantially upwards, and the fact that cars are off the road.

There are around 30,000 to 35,000 car deaths per year in the US over the last ten years, and around 35,000 to 45,000 deaths from suicide. Those are terrible number sin absolute terms, of course, but even if those went to 0 for a year during the pandemic, that’s still less than 15% of the deaths currently attributed to COVID-19 in the US.

I saw an article to the effect that car-related deaths are up because, since there are fewer cars on the road, the drivers who are left drive faster and/or more recklessly and get in more accidents. So, as with everything in this pandemic, it's complicated...

Yeah I was struck by how fucking insane people got on the roads shortly after the pandemic struck.

You'd think people would chill out because the roads were practically empty, but I guess pandemic stress combined with the immediate rage of "the roads are empty and this asshole camper is only doing 75 mph in left lane" leading to absolute lunacy at very high speeds.

Normal levels of rush hour traffic around here mean nobody can do more than 50 mph at best with an average speed closer to 35, which probably keeps the deaths down.

Interesting. So scratch the bit about cars.

Doesn't honestly surprise me that much , I was driving up i95 in late March and people were pulling some really crazy shit in the early pandemic. I also saw a few (looked deadly to me) wrecks on the highway.

Traffic deaths were up very slightly in 2021. Not enough to move the needle on all-cause mortality.

For my country and some others I monitored, the first wave happened outside of flu season, and excess mortality was higher than COVID deaths at that point and continued to track.

Second wave was more difficult since it overlapped the normal flu season.

You can see graphs here showing normal flu seasons and where COVID fits in: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Some more factors might be hospital crowding early in the pandemic, people avoiding medical treatment, and increased homicide rates.

> people avoiding medical treatment

People avoiding medical treatment is awkward in the figures, because - medical treatment sometimes kills people. First link I found suggests that medical treatments cause 800,000 deaths per year in the USA.

If medical treatments are really down, I'd guess we might actually expect mortality figures to be temporarily down (but, higher later).

> irst link I found suggests that medical treatments cause 800,000 deaths per year in the USA.

That number pops up all the time in clickbait headlines, but the study behind it doesn't really support the claim.

There is a pretty substantial difference between "Deaths caused by medical mistakes" and "Deaths that occur in a certain timeframe after a medical mistake occurs" (which is what the study actually looked at) are two very different things.

The sicker someone is, the more likely they are to receive healthcare (so there are more opportunities for mistakes). Also, the sicker someone is, the more likely they are to die. Those two combine to result in a lot of folks that die shortly after a medical mistake, even if the mistake was very minor, and didn't contribute in any way to their death.

I really ought to reread my comments during the edit window... That second paragraph...

If medical treatment causes more deaths than it prevents on average, we’re probably doing it wrong, though maybe it looks different in the short term as you imply.

Agreed. All medical treatments are about balancing risks.

Whenever you take any surgery (for example), the meaningful risk of immediate death is balanced against the benefit of better quality of life later.

If you measure the impact of medical treatments only on the day they are taken, you'll only find evidence that a bunch of people have died who wouldn't have otherwise died on that day.

You can't then observe the benefit until some time has passed.

I wouldn't call it at all doubtful. The fact there's less cars on the road can only push excess mortality down, regardless of lack of exercise, so it seems sensible to attribute it all to the pandemic.

Also, suicides aren't significantly up,the physical and psychological effects of lockdown don't happen immediately, while a reduction of car deaths do.

e.g. UK suicides have not significantly changed in 2020:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

So overall I think they're pretty safely assume that any excess deaths are coronavirus, especially as flu has all but disappeared too.