You say, "..there is no other compiler of Excess Deaths for the US that I know of. I once found a UK site quoting them, but probably from the CDC." Correct, as the Economist estimates from the CDC, so gathering data is seen but estimating is also seen. As to data, the taxonomy and coding with precede excess death calculations still are interesting as I had mentioned before. With changing definitions, coding and data acquisition, much remains a question.
Still amusing was from mid 2020 -- "WHAT'S UP, DOC? Dr Deborah Birx ‘doesn't trust the CDC’ as experts fear coronavirus cases have been INFLATED."
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11599541/dr-deborah-birx-doesnt-trust-coronavirus-cdc-data-inflated/
Johns Hopkins today reports 5,353,969 global deaths, and US (as 4.25 percent of the world population) deaths at 806,439.
As a small share of the global population and assuming that the virus affects humans somewhat equally, the US' deaths should be about that percentage of the global deaths. It is not. 227,544 deaths would be that number. The number collected from their data set is currently the larger 806,439 as of today. Almost three times the global toll. But....
India with its 1.4 billion is half the death toll of the US, at 477,158 as of today.
Your Economist site states, "In India, for example, our estimates suggest that perhaps 2.3m people had died from covid-19 by the start of May 2021, compared with about 200,000 official deaths." Which data are correct? That collected or that estimated?
Their "estimate" of 2.3 million is far larger than the JHU' tabulation of 477,158 reported today, which is larger than a normative estimate. More than four times as many as that counted and reported. So the data and the Eocnomist-admitted "estimates" vary hugely.
All the excess death calculations do not explain such data discrepancies. This is because they tabulate with their data collection and estimated excess deaths. Before the data is collected is the issue.
"From" and "with" have been conflated. "Including the "assumed" in reports has been the WHO methodology since April of 2020. The Economist "corrects" a value for India, as above, with an estimate wildly outside any data set I have reviewed.
So my skepticism after looking at your sources actually has been reinforced.
The live-alone old codger scenario is very powerful. It leads to grows undercounting of Covid deaths.
India is safely ignored. Focus on things like this from the data and only that particular data leads to errors that could be avoided with some extra awareness — specifically, India has an absurdly low life expectancy. They have a magnificent space program doing interplanetary exploration and a huge proportion of their population has no toilets.
So . . . India LE is actually about 70 yrs old. Men sub 70 as I recall. And for purposes of Covid this says exactly what we would think — of course Covid deaths are not properly proportional to the total population. The prime Covid targets died long before they could be hit.
China is a different matter. I originally thought their bionerds had discovered a subtle difference of Asian lung cells vs others and this explained low death rates in 2020 of ALL OF ASIA, not merely China. But . . . then the variants arrived and smacked Asia, more than China.
I shot my own theory down by discovering US citizens and UK citizens of Asian descent were dying at the same rates as other ethnicities. So . . . killed my own theory.