Yes, but what we can do is compare, as the article states.<p>In the UK, since early 2020 there have been 220K deaths from coronavirus in a population of 70 million. That's approximately 0.3% of the population. (My understanding is that the US has roughly the same proportion).<p>I feel very able to grasp that, you can just look at, say, ordinarily, very roughly 1% of the population dies per year.<p>edit: the actual percentage is slightly lower, but this is a good ballpark.<p>If we front load all of the coronavirus deaths into year 1 (this is pretty much true, it's really tailed off post vaccine), and we assume they're all "excess" deaths, then it's a bumper year in which we have 30%, maybe 40-50% more deaths than normal.<p>Whether you feel that's a lot is an opinion. I feel it's significant but didn't warrant the response it got.<p>I actually think that what people don't realise intuitively is that over half a million people die annually in the UK. We are actually indeed mortal.