COVID-19 Has Not Increased All-Cause Mortality Totals

There is debate about the actual mortality from COVID-19. Projections started at over two million. Reported deaths so far are under 100,000.

Reliable mortality data has been difficult to obtain or decipher for several reasons.

For one, there has been no country-wide total for those infected. Percent mortality can't be calculated without this denominator (% mortality = # of deaths/# of infections). In areas where there has been comprehensive testing, the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 0.03-0.1%, not the 5-10% originally projected.

Muddying the waters further is the directive from the CDC permitting almost any death to be put in the UO7.1 COVID-19 column. https://cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf Hospitals and doctors are incentivized to do this since they are reimbursed by the government for doing so. Flu and pneumonia deaths, in particular, are being attributed to COVIC-19.

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Those who are vested in portraying this as an epic pandemic—the media, politicians, medical officials—continue to slant information in order to justify their hyperbole and the unprecedented economic and societal damage from the shutdown.
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One statistic that would surely reflect the increased deaths from COVID-19, would be the all-cause total deaths. A new disease would create added deaths to overall mortality figures. However, as this chart adapted from CDC data shows, total mortality in the US since January has dramatically decreased compared to past years. That is the opposite of what would be expected.

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Clearly, if COVID-19 is a new highly lethal disease, then the all-cause mortality should increase, not decrease.
 
Defenders of the mitigation being used for COVID-19 will look at this chart, be hit with cognitive dissonance, and proclaim that it is the mitigation that has resulted in the decline. But that makes no sense since at the same time they are claiming that COVID-19 deaths are escalating.
 
The dramatic and unique drop in all-cause mortality can indeed be attributed to the concomitant unique thing, namely shutting down society and locking people in their homes. But the drop is not due to suppressing COVID-19 deaths, but rather due to a drop in far greater causes of death.
 
For example, people not driving will eliminate almost 2.4 million car accident deaths, injuries, and disabilities each year. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812580 Just not being in motion, running, biking, boating, working, exercising, or any activity decreases deaths.
 
People not going to hospitals and doctors, as in past medical strikes, always results in decreased mortality and injuries. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953608005066
 
Medical intervention is the leading cause of death in the US due to side effects (pharmaceuticals, chemotherapies, and vaccines), errors (iatrogenic), and nosocomial effects (infections transmitted in hospitals). That amounts to about 800,000 each year in the US, and over 64 million deaths worldwide since 2000. https://pharmadeathclock.com/ Those outrageous numbers are a minimum since it assumes doctors and hospitals admit to all the deaths they are responsible for
 
And certainly, isolating people prevents them from exposure to all pathogens transmitted by humans. There are thousands of such pathogens, COVID-19 being one of the more innocuous of them in terms of lethality.
 
In other words, if saving lives were the real objective, car driving, hospitals, conventional medical care, industry, activity of almost every sort, and all interpersonal contact should be prohibited. And along with that, reductio ad absurdum, citizens should just accede to the collapse of society, the economy, and infrastructure leading to death and disease unequaled in history.
 
Such an absurd finale is the consequence of the absurd premise that relinquishing freedom and a life worth living is a worthwhile price to pay to attempt prevention of all potential deaths.