Personally my guess is that COVID was, yes, responsible for the vast majority of those deaths.

But I also do think that those cases of overcounting are very likely NOT the only, isolated ones. The dynamics exposed (how hospitalizations were counted, the basic 'with' vs 'of' question), almost certainly apply more broadly.

So, apologies for attempting nuance, but I think COVID can at once be a) a massive pandemic (and tragic for millions), while also being b) somewhat overblown due to unrigorous metrics that in turn feed more sensationalism than otherwise warranted.

But that’s not really nuance in any classic sense —- you’re right to point out that there were numerous problems (as expected with a novel virus) in attributing deaths with any certainty to Covid so we did the best we could. And even with the “sensationalism” and “overcounting”, excess deaths surpassed actual Covid deaths by something like 15%.

Doesn’t that actually imply that there wasn’t enough sensationalism and that our methods, while attributing some non-Covid deaths to Covid, were actually missing many more Covid deaths?

I don’t get the leap from “we misattributed some non-Covid deaths to Covid” in an environment that had even more deaths that our supposed overcount as evidence that we overreacted.

So you're saying 'net net', you think the COVID mortality is undercounted? If I had to bet something valuable, I'd take the other side. That's just what seems most probable to me, based on the evidence I cited.

Another plausible explanation to excess mortality differences is that lockdowns and other measures caused people to engage in behaviors that increased mortality, from putting off necessary medical visits to exacerbated mental health due to social isolation or financial stress.