For 2020 it was down a touch.
https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-incre...
Per the original source data from the CDC [1]:
> For males, the age-adjusted suicide rate dropped 2%, from 22.4 per 100,000 in 2019 to 21.9 in 2020. Rates for males in age groups 10–14 and 25–34 increased by 13% and 5%, respectively, although only the 5% increase for those aged 25–34 (from 28.0 to 29.3) was significant. Rates for males aged 45–54, 55–64, and 65–74 declined (Figure 3). Although essentially unchanged from 2019, the rate for males aged 75 and over was the highest of all age groups at 40.2 in 2020.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...
I interpreted it as deaths caused by Covid. Do you have a reason to interpret it differently?
For example, if those disabilities are due to long COVID, then that would indicate that the cure is indeed not worse than the problem itself, but rather that the problem is even worse than we thought.
Why is the total deaths up? Are cancer deaths going up because the system is stressed by COVID? Are the people who are dying people who had COVID, or people who didn't?
Are people dying because they have more stress and less exercise? Are people dying because of the restrictions due to the pandemic? Are people dying because they have lost their job and no longer have access to health care? Are people dying because of hidden effects of a vaccine? Are people dying because social isolation causes follow-on problems?
That's not even to talk about Fentanyl and meth addiction, as mentioned above, which seems to be a confounding factor that started before COVID.
Perhaps there is a complex interaction of issues that will lead everyone to their own interpretation.
This data doesn't tell us any of those things. And it certainly doesn't say, one way or the other, if the cure was worse than the disease, or even what cure we are talking about.