The way I understand it is; you can't compare to mortality rates for other various things because these other various are spread out over a 12 month period. When there is a spike in Covid cases they all happen at the same time, which floods the health system and people die needlessly (e.g. not enough ventilators). People can get very ill (and die) from the flu as well but they don't tend to do this all at the same time (i.e. no spike) but get sick spread out over a longer period of time.
I'm all for the approach of not overwhelming healthcare. After the initial surge health care was not overwhelmed regardless of approaches to restrictions. Look at Florida vs California: They had same outcome with opposite approaches.