[mattmanser]

Suicides numbers are nowhere near high enough to make a significant difference, they'd have to increase by 1000%. And apparently they fell by 5% in the US in 2020 anyway.

And US drug overdose went from 72k in 2019 to 81k in 2020. So less than 2% of the economist's 500k[1] might be attributable to that.

You might point at road deaths, which have increased quite strangely, but again, wrong order of magnitude, by 2 orders even, increase of 4k compared to 500k.

So to answer your question, no, it's not a questionable assumption.

Perhaps you might consider the simplest explanation, a deadly virus, is the best one?

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/04/05/deaths-i...