Absolutely wrong on almost everything you wrote here.
2018 is clearly marked in the chart you responded to.
Deaths in NY, NJ (don’t know about Michigan) early in the pandemic occurred at such a high mortality rate because we did not have any effective ways to treat Covid.
Not sure you can say "absolutely wrong" when the chart you posted clearly has "NOW" at essentially the SAME POINT as it was in 2018 in overall deaths.
Your chart, you posted. If it helps, I can draw a dotted line for you.
As for "we did not have effective ways to treat COVID", we didn't have to have effective ways. A 3rd grader could have understood that taking infected people and shacking them up with the elderly and highly ill would have been a bad move.