Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. Every time I see such claims, I still cringe at the thought of figuring out what it actually means. The details are gory, and can be summarized simplistically by saying "death with COVID ≠ death from COVID". In other words, figuring out true disease toll is a rather ambiguous problem, as stated. Can someone point me to a referenc…
The easy way to get a rough answer here is simply to compare the death rate from the same time of year a couple of years back. Assuming no other events that would cause a large swing in death rate, most of the variance can likely be explained by COVID.
It's not obvious this is a tenable assumption, though. Depression and isolation can also increase mortality for things not directly related to depression and isolation, for example.