From a reader. One can argue about the number of non-Covid excess deaths, but he is right - the difference between using a 2% increase in deaths in 2020 as a baseline and a 1.5% decrease makes a huge change to the baseline relative to the number of reported #Covid deaths...

The reason this matters is that if the baseline is higher, the total number of excess deaths is lower (well below the number of reported Covid deaths) - which means that the argument that many reported Covid deaths are just shifted out of other categories becomes stronger...

It may seem strange that such a small change (-2% vs. 1.5%) could have such a large impact. That fact tells you as much as anything just how much about #Covid is the product of media hysteria. If this were a genuine emergency, we wouldn't be arguing about "with/from" deaths...

Or whether the real IFR worldwide is closer to 0.1% or 0.3%... Or the criteria for admission to the (empty) field hospitals... Or whether the median age of death worldwide is 78 or 81. We have spent a year doing everything possible to make #Covid look as bad as possible.