I do think a large number of those who have died would die anyway, just maybe a few months later instead. When a vaccine is available, a lot of the deaths will end of course as those at highest risk will be protected (mind, as I understand, the MOST high risk people tend not to be able to get vaccines anyway? So a friend says with a child who has had a lot of operations and such anyway). I highly doubt we are going to vaccinate the entire country. If we are, that would pretty much stop any deaths in their tracks. If not, then a proportion of those 'not high risk' will still die from this anyway.
Given a vaccine seems so far off according to a whole lot of scientists (tw I know who work in this field say september is overly optomistic definitely, and suspect september is mentioned simply to calm people down, rather than as an actual likelihod) then yeah, a lot more will die. How it appears this works in a lot of cases is is..basically speeds up deaths, rather than causes them as such. Have read that most of those who have died would have died anyway bin the next year or whatever. that doesn't include healthy hospital staff and such woh appear to be getting their systems overdosed with the virus.
I suspect also (this originally came from a mate who works in the research part of the local hospital) that those who had a lot of deaths/infection on the first wave, will be less hit on the second, as it stands to reason that high rates already mean high raates of immune people also (and yes, the evidence does look like we have at least some kind of immunity after catching it).
in countries that acted early enough, track and trace and keeping on top of things will keep them 'safe'. I think thats too late for us personally tbh. Too many have it. Yet not quite enough have had it either.
This post was ful of waffle and prob didn't even answer the OP. Yeah, I think that most of those who have died would have died anyway, and if they didn't die 'of covid' now, they would possibly die 'of it' later.
Mind I dislike the way its made out to be dying 'because of' covid in all cases seemingly, rather than the more accurate..dying 'with' it. My aunt died a few weeks back, shes been ill for years and years and actually didn't show any symptoms at all of covid despite testing positive (yes I know many are asymptmatic though..but you would assume asymptomatic would also mean..not likely to die OF?) but her death has been put down to covid. I disagree, as do a few people who were treating her. she clearly did have it..as the test said so. But whats debateable is what killed her. If all deaths where someone tests positive are going down as covid deaths, then the numbers are even more wrong than they seem to be to start with! Huge huge difference between dying of something and dying with it. If we tested for stuff like flu (not comparing this to flu, before anyone starts) and a bunch of people died of cardiac arrest but tested positive for flu, would we say they died of flu?! I think many of those dying in ICU it can be reasoably established that they died 'of' covid, by the last hours of their lives..apparently its like drowning (which is why a lot of medics seem to think ventilators do more harm than good recently) but those like my aunt, who died due to a stroke, but was positive for the virus..I would not say she died of covid. But she is in the stats as doing so.