Good a place as any for some data:
About 2 million 65+ people die in the US in a normal year. That’s based on 2018 data with projection forward for opioids and other trends in place.
In 2020, the number was about 2.5 million. 25% increase in deaths over a normal year.
Note that this 25% increase adds to only about 5% of the total 65+ population. That 5% is replaced by age 64 turning 65 over a year or two. Society has to decide if losing 5% of that age segment is worthy of measures to save them, or to ignore the deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
These are some other numbers.
Covid was the third leading cause of death.
As you know many of the Covid deaths are in dispute, since almost all of them involved folks with other diseases at the same time.
Imho this was little more than a severe flu—way overplayed...
It is not just deaths that matter in this equation. COVID also has a nasty tendency to really mess some people up in other ways. I personally know of two younger people (age 30-45) that survived COVID but developed almost debilitating long term side effects. One girl I know now suffers from intense daily migraines and chronic insomnia going on about 4 months now. She was an active healthy adult who is now a wreck.