Sure, but their deaths can be attributed to lockdowns. And when the vaccine is out, their deaths will probably be attributed to the vaccine.
Measuring excess mortality is not going to convince a covid denialist.
Imagine a parallel universe, where COVID-19 is actually just a flu, but for some reason the oppresive governments execute anyone who says so. In the parallel universe, they also have excess mortality (because of the executions) during 2020. So you cannot use the mere fact of excessive mortality to prove that we do not in fact live in this parallel universe.
It is not "conflating". That's the actual point of the exercise here. It's asking, how would things have been had there not been a pandemic? How much impact did the pandemic have on the society, in TOTAL, OVERALL.