It’s also politics.
It was recently announced by CDC that all pneumonia, influenza and Covid deaths are lumped together in a number category listed as Covid but labeled “PIC” thus pneumonia and influenza deaths are deflated and Covid inflated in the statistics.
I guess we’ll have to wait for the total mortality rates to come out for this year to see if all other manors of death declined sharply. I’m sure this will be debated for years by the pointy heads.