You do have to take the time factor into account when comparing cases. The first vaccination was only a year after the first confirmed covid case. Of course there were more deaths pre-vaccine. There were only 12 months pre-vaccine.

All other diseases had a few thousand years pre-vaccine, or at least a few hundred.

Compare cases over 1 year to cases over nearly 4 years, and the latter will almost always be higher. There are exceptions, but not many. And then we have the shenanigans of "died of" vs "died with"....