When you are talking about the urgency of stopping the disease definitely so.
Maybe so. In terms of getting through to a person who doesn't want to accept your point, someone who is looking for any excuse to not believe you, it can very much look like you are trying to pad the numbers. It gives them a point to argue on, a wedge they can stick in your presentation that allows them to feel justified in dismissing you entirely.
A better approach is "these X people are killed by the virus (in a direct biological sense) and these Y people are killed by the ancillary effects of our being in a pandemic (the healthcare system being overloaded, folks losing jobs/insurance, folks avoiding health care, etc)."