The excess death charts for many countries (the topic of this HN item) do not show any substantial deviation in January 2020.
If you're thinking absolute terms rather than excess deaths you're probably looking at Northern Hemisphere countries, so January is Winter, which is associated with higher death rates, but you'll see a different pattern in the South because their Winter is six months offset from ours.
Yes this means countries like Australia and New Zealand may well have already experienced the worst of COVID-19 in June-July-August 2020 while the worst in the US or England might be next month, and yes given that they've seen very few deaths while we have thousands every day that's extremely bad news.
If you're thinking absolute terms rather than excess deaths you're probably looking at Northern Hemisphere countries, so January is Winter, which is associated with higher death rates, but you'll see a different pattern in the South because their Winter is six months offset from ours.
Yes this means countries like Australia and New Zealand may well have already experienced the worst of COVID-19 in June-July-August 2020 while the worst in the US or England might be next month, and yes given that they've seen very few deaths while we have thousands every day that's extremely bad news.