But if you assume the main thing special about this year was the virus and strategies aimed at mitigating it, you can still compare overall outcomes between jurisdictions. If tight lockdowns decrease COVID deaths but increase other deaths enough to compensate then they didn’t achieve anything. It would be valuable to know the exact breakdown but you don’t have to.

Right, but my point is that it's hard to separate those things if your idea is just "excess deaths tell us the cost". So if lockdowns slow COVID but increase suicides... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know it’s easy to be a bit cynical once we take an abstract view.

Please let’s remember it is not a simple lever.

Let’s remember the overflowing ICUs and morgues and the very very limited menu of possible immediate actions - all this amongst unprecedented scrutiny, politicization and division.

We’re human. We’re doing the best we can. Lockdowns do flatten the curve.

People only say that since California is actually under reporting more than Florida.