“who were already on their way out the door”
This is true of course. The Italians are just saying that most who died had comorbidities. But exactly when death would come knocking is extremely variable - next week or in ten years? Covid accelerated a lot of these, by how much, in each case, we can’t say. But the acceleration of death was significant.
My uncle died, three months after getting covid, of the effects of covid on his pre-existing degenerative lung condition, which would have eventually killed him anyway. But when he got covid he had been living with it for 10 years and was still very active, and had just retired, looking forward to at least a few good years. Thats exactly what the Italians are saying, and this acceleration of deaths is no reason to dismiss covid.
You can see this in the excess deaths over the covid period, that is the deaths above the normal trend. See link on the European analysis of excess mortality. Scroll down for country by country by week.