Good job, coach! You exposed what I got wrong. I wasn't being exact enough, and said something that was
similar to what I intended, but meant something else entirely. Spot on analysis refuting my central claim at the beginning. I said "There are hundreds of thousands more people who have died in the US this past year than recent years. This is due to COVID." The data you provided conclusively proves that is false. The primary driver of an increase in number of dead people each year is an increase in the growing population, as you have indicated irrefutably. What I should have been more careful to say, instead, was that the number of deaths predicted using statistics, calculus and epidemiological science including data from previous years, and calculated by people who have made it their life's work to study this kind of thing, funded by the most powerful country on Earth, is greater than that expected.
The causative factor in this divergence from what was expected can be conclusively said to be from COVID-19.
Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19 Here's data from a 3-letter organization better than CBS, the CDC. The figure near the middle of the page shows tens of thousands more people
than expected, that is, than that calculated through established specialized demographic techniques, died in the year 2020. As can be seen, every year, more people die on an average summer week than an average winter week. Cold weather is inherently deadly. Vitamin D production goes down, people freeze, but mostly, immune systems get suppressed when temperatures are colder. That's why flu season is usually in the winter. There are 330 million Americans. The estimate most epidemiologists researching COVID-19 deaths in the US would give for total deaths due to this virus is 400,000. It's not that exact number, but it is in the neighborhood of that number. Obviously, with 330,000 people being one tenth of one percent of Americans, this is small in comparison to the year-to-year death rate you posted. However, that death rate can still be, and is, estimated with a 95% prediction interval, and it's undeniable, if even counting just death certificates filed alone, that in 2020 the death rate is higher than expected by hundreds of thousands. The reason for that is that there's a pandemic, a public health crisis affecting the US.
We can discount CBS News, but I am not a leftist. I am an American who tries my damnedest to have an evidence-based understanding of the world I live in. This principle is what drove me to Starting Strength, so that I'm not wasting my time on periodization. Your program most clearly had theory backing up why it worked, as well as ample evidence that it works, and works more-efficiently than alternatives. I can certainly err in the execution of that principle, as you have seen and corrected for. Thanks for that, by the way. I don't wanna spout bullshit, and welcome all efforts to help me in the goal of avoiding doing such a thing.