Hoping? Nah. It's just simple math. December 12 is week 49 of 52. Assuming a constant death rate for simplicity, 52/49 * 2,800,974 = 2,972,462. And that's not accounting for the fact that reports typically lag by a few weeks, so the final tally will probably be 100k-200k higher.
What you've done in your US table is compared previous years' full-year tallies to 2020 year-to-date. Pretty damn silly if you ask me.
