Hypothesis: "If there had been mass spread outside of Asia as soon as January or February, we would have been able to tell because of unusually high excess deaths"
Contradicted by: "There are known cases of mass spread that didn't result in unusually high excess deaths"
Therefore, excess death is an insufficient metric to reveal a mass spread of COVID-19 - it could have been spreading undetected.
Whether there have been any measures to limit the spread is irrelevant to that conclusion.
> "There are known cases of mass spread that didn't result in unusually high excess deaths"
You used Germany as an example.
Here's the situation in Germany:
Since 13 March, the pandemic has been managed in the protection stage as per the RKI plan, with German states mandating school and kindergarten closures, postponing academic semesters and prohibiting visits to nursing homes to protect the elderly. Two days later, borders to five neighbouring countries were closed. By 22 March, all regional governments had announced curfews or restrictions in public spaces. Throughout Germany, domestic travelling is only authorised in groups not exceeding two people unless they are from the same household. Some German states imposed further restrictions authorising people to leave their homes only for certain activities including commuting to workplaces, exercising or purchasing groceries.[10]
Tell me, please, how does this support the idea that mass spread without extreme protective measures (as was the case in January or February) can result in no excess death?
> Tell me, please, how does this support the idea that mass spread without extreme protective measures (as was the case in January or February) can result in no excess death?
I'm not saying it can result in "no excess death", I'm saying if there had been mass spread back then, even on the order of hundreds of thousands of cases, it could've gone unnoticed, because the excess death would've been within the seasonal variance.
If there are really 10x as many actual cases as reported - which is what antibody studies suggest - then the virus has either been spreading much faster than we assumed, or has been spreading for longer than we assumed.
The fact that somebody who died in France in December appears to have been infected with COVID-19 strongly suggests that there has been community spread far earlier than we assumed.
Let me reiterate:
Hypothesis: "If there had been mass spread outside of Asia as soon as January or February, we would have been able to tell because of unusually high excess deaths"
Contradicted by: "There are known cases of mass spread that didn't result in unusually high excess deaths"
Therefore, excess death is an insufficient metric to reveal a mass spread of COVID-19 - it could have been spreading undetected.
Whether there have been any measures to limit the spread is irrelevant to that conclusion.