Modern science has made this even more of a thorny topic than in earlier times. We usually evaluate the impacts of past pandemics by looking at the escalations in mortality (all causes) and localised population drops. It is taken as read that widespread disease will have caused many further deaths due to domino effects on trade, resource availability, social restrictions, etc. The total effect of a pandemic is what matters.
Covid-19 is the first novel pathogen to have been identified, analysed and sequenced in real time as it happened. These were incredible achievements of a global scientific community working together through good will, as were the first tests, vaccines and treatment protocols.
But our new ability to quickly identify the pathogen gave rise to the "of, with or from?" argument - which is pointless in the scheme of things, but still exercises many. It indulged an eagerness to separate with-Covid deaths from all the others that would not have happened if there had been no pandemic. These are being seen as due to failings in health services and governance, rather than part of Covid's impact.
From a planning point of view, the information is useful. However, public health planning always takes the full picture into account. The new data allows experts to track the falling dominoes more accurately than before; this is the only way the insights should be used.
Instead, the picture's being insistently blurred by commentators getting carried away with the new granularity of data. They're missing the main point - which is that all these deaths (and subsequent economic & social repercussions) were caused by the fact of Covid-19.
I suppose that, for as long as the UK has a government that deliberately ignores public health assessments, this doesn't matter much.
But long-term - it matters. It really matters a lot.