I'm assuming tokai is saying that because obese people are more likely to have complications from Covid19, the US saw a higher increase in excess deaths, given that the obesity rate is higher than eg Germany.
This also explains some of the racial disparities in COVID deaths since the obesity rate for blacks is 49.6% vs 44.8% for Hispanics, 42.2% for whites, and 17.4% for Asians
Oh, I see, I thought they meant that the excess deaths were caused by obesity, not by COVID19 leading to higher rates of death among the obese. That makes more sense.