Measuring excess deaths doesn't skip that debate. e.g. consider a world where the only populations that died were very old people and morbidly obese people, and everyone else experienced mild or no symptoms. In that world, it would be fair to say that being very old or morbidly obese caused people to die from what was otherwise a mild cold; i.e. those comorbitities were "the cause". Then it would be fair to say excess deaths are a measurement of how prevalent those groups are.