[freeandfreezing]

This is an interesting area of research. There is some seasonality to death rates, partially due to influenza, and partially due to changes in accident rates by season and other similar causes.

There were clearly increased death rates in some areas for a few weeks during the early COVID-19 outbreak in New York and New Jersey. But the data is not as clear for other areas.

A deeper analysis of month by month data would be interesting.

[Svartalfiar]

This is an interesting area of research. There is some seasonality to death rates, partially due to influenza, and partially due to changes in accident rates by season and other similar causes.

Seasonality shouldn't affect this. It's a year vs year vs year comparison, so that same seasonality would be present in each data point being compared.

The only big issues might be if there's a significant number of deaths yet to be reported (unlikely), or they compared total numbers for the full year, when this year isn't completed yet (possible). But, the death chart shows a pretty big drop the past month or two, so I would be inclined to believe the story is accurate.