When assessing the impacts of pandemics, it is the excess deaths that count - which is why agencies such as the CDC analyse excess deatgs (because people might not have died of Covid, but they might have died from something else).
For example, take Finland:
It might have lower per capita Covid deaths than Sweden, but it recorded 4.3% excess deaths compared with preceding years (a full 2.5 times higher than the standard deviation):
Recall from earlier post that the excess deaths for Sweden in 2020 was 2.4% (which is within normal variations as defined by the standard deviation), so lower than Finland's excess deaths.
Which is preferable?
A country with low, or high, excess deaths?.
