What would be your definition of not running? It's like when someone says "We survived Covid!". Yes, you might have but thousands of others died.
I.e., the number is not affected by how people were diagnosed, or how their cause of death was recorded. Claiming that there was a widespread trend of classifying unrelated deaths as COVID-19-related doesn’t affect that number at all. Here’s a CDC page about this: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/89507/cdc_89507_DS1.pdf
inflation combined with little to no wage increase leading to total economic stall outside of the scope of any safety mechanisms, which precipitates an extreme cliff-face degradation of everyday life and commerce for citizens at every level.
or, another way : conditions that would lead to public rebellion en masse, which further stalls things past the economic strife.
the type of thing 1780s France saw.