San Diego antibody study has shown 50-80x more people have the antibodies than previously suspected.  Meaning everyone already had it, and we didn't notice.  Yes more people are dying from this, but that's because it's novel.  During the beanie baby crazy in the 90s you'd see a similar spike in beanie baby related deaths.  Literally any sweeping fad will cause this type of exponential spike in deaths, whether it's the macarena or a new lung cold.