Your link for excess deaths is access denied for me. In any event, the vector was only mildly attenuated (or you wouldn't be able to claim the case-load and the high mortality rate).
Google "CDC excess deaths" and I'm sure you'll find the source. I'm citing the US CDC, so that's going to be about the best aggregation one can get.
As I responded to in an earlier comment, the public was frequently cited and chastised for not respecting the protocols (remember the term super-spreader and Trump rallies?
I don't really care about whatever media reports were doing to chide people and don't particularly agree. I know that lockdowns in my state (I am in the US, I should be clear about) drastically reduced contact between most people I know. A segment of people ignored it, sure, but particularly early on, people took it seriously. Actual data beyond anecdotal experience (e.g. actual miles traveled from cell phone data, etc.) tends to show a drastic drop in people going to large events. Further, large events and conventions were largely and indisputedly canceled. Losing every large crowded mass event is not minor attenuation. If your point is that the media is alarmist, though, sure.
In any event, you are citing excess mortalities overall, which I agree will be higher, but that can be attributed to a number of factors (such as the destruction both economically and socially our response has caused in millions of lives), as well as the fact that unlike influenza, our population was exposed to a novel virus which drastically affects older people.
There are a lot of influences. One, the uptick in deaths happened prior to lockdowns really starting. There are a huge number of influences here. Car deaths went down due to miles traveled. I'm sure some deaths went up from a hesitance to seek care. Suicides, for instance, surprisingly went down, against expectation. However, the volume change is very large relative to any of the other death sources you mention.
Therefore the deaths that might have come between 1-5 or so years from now might have pulled forward. If that was the case, the excess mortality in the next few years should have a marked lull. (Gosh, I hate speaking about mortality and death in abstract terms, forgive me).
If we can't talk about these things in the abstract, then we can't quantify.
Yes, I will be interested to see if there's a dip in the coming years. I was honestly curious to see if there was a dip over last fall, indicating exactly what you said. This will be a difficult calculation to do, because per capita is likely still not subtle enough, and it would have to be calculated based on age cohort. That didn't really seem to happen.
However, the longer it takes for that dip in each cohort to happen, the less one can "discount" it. Many elderly people losing the last five years of their lives is still a tragedy, both emotionally and from a family support perspective. I personally suspect people probably lost much more (decade(s)).
In any event, I stand by my original argument. A part of the obvious excessiveness of the death count attributed to COVID-19 exposure was the standout nature of the United States among the death rates. We should have a lower number than most countries, as we had a more adequate medical system with more ventilators and ICU beds per capita than just about anywhere, a relatively young and growing population, a well nourished population as well, and a health conscious population (relatively). Therefore we should have been able to weather a storm like COVID was supposed to be much fairer than our international peers. We didn't. On a per capita basis, we were dead last. Other countries didnt shut down quite like we did, didnt take it as seriously as we did, and didnt prepare like we did. That outlier to me can only be explained by a consideration of the incentives to increase the number. The incentive was to report higher COVID cases for more federal compensation.
And the obesity percentage in the US is high, as is diabetes and other complicating risk factors. Testing per person was much lower at the beginning allowing easier spread. You can't throw out the negatives but keep the positives in formulating a projection. Everything you're saying was probably said (and will be said again) in wargame simulations of pandemics, but I find it very hard to square with the data.
Mind you, I dont blame the hospitals for doing it. We basically took away their bread and butter business of elective surgeries, scared all their clients to stay home, and then incentivized them with money to report COVID cases. Of course we were going to get an inflated number. We practically insisted on it!
Like many other things, I can't assert it didn't ever happen. It would just require fraud on a scale that just doesn't account for anywhere near the bulk of the volume. Again, if your assertion was "flu deaths got counted as COVID and inflated the death rate" just can't work because it would require a number of flu deaths that is phenomenally beyond the statistics of recent decades. A flu like that would have been noticed by the large community that studies (and is funded to study it!) and publicized as such.