You may wish to review the numbers you are stating comparisons about. The rate for COVID per day in the US is about 1300 (911k / 700 days). The total is about 9000 per day, which is 3x 9/11 every day

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

You must look at excess death not death in total.

1300/day is roughly the excess.

You need to compare it to normal (expected) total.

excluding comparisons means you cannot judge severity one way or another. Basic stats here

Yes, and our response was pretty strong. How does my comment run counter to that? If it were even worse than it was, a Chinese-level lockdown response would have been necessary, but it wasn't, at least here in the USA.