[orwin]

I don't know if it's as general as that. I just checked excess mortality, France VS UK [0] as they have a similar GDP and similar health system (and I know France situation better). This summer, we had three heatwaves, reached new record temperatures in 9/12 of all cities I've lived in, and had the longest heatwave ever recorded, as well as the earliest one. We had way more excess death during the 2020 summer, or even the 2021 summer (tbh, although it was pre-omicron, the excess death can probably also be caused by car crashes).

It seems to me that the excess death in my country will reach the baseline (maybe a bit higher since the average age is growing, but not much) as long as this summer is an outlier. UK data almost tell the same story, but I don't think you had the same heatwaves, and I don't know how to explain what is happening right now.

Putting that on the lockdowns only would need explaining why this effect isn't seen in France, as ours were both longer and more numerous I think (we had three, and only two in the UK, right?).

[0]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores...