This article is junk. It is idiotic to compare US 2017 deaths with European death rates, and say there were 400,000 excess deaths. Compare the US to India and there are negative “excess” deaths.
I am not sure this is junk but I am interested in why you believe this.
I have written about how the US life expectancy actually declined in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
That actually has not happened in the US since the Spanish Flu. In fact, the US rarely suffered two consecutive years of life expectancy decline. HIV and flu in the early 60s caused such declines.
It does seem to me entirely possible that what was inflicted upon the US in that trifecta was worse than COVID. Total deaths from COVID are almost certainly higher but the fact that the deaths predominate among those over 70 brings the result that the authors report: more years of life were lost.
How do you propose to defeat that argument?