You're not hearing what I'm trying to say. Let me try an example.
In the last full week of 2020, the "expected" number of people didn't die in the US: the actual number was 24 to 26,000 higher for the week. Not died of covid, died at all.
The next week, it was 27k. The next week, it was 26.5k. The next week, it was 26k. This is rough mental math based on eyeballing the chart so please forgive small errors.
Is there reason to doubt that the vast majority of these "excess deaths" were caused by people dying of covid? If not, then if we add up the number of such excess deaths and get 600k, would you agree that would be a reasonable total to be throwing around regardless of what silly things people in NY or CA might be putting on death certificates?