It could be. It could also be that the Health Ministry (which is still functional enough to be counting deaths in real time, as that's where most of our figures come from) is already accounting for deaths by disease and starvation or missing persons reports.

If you're the kind of person who thinks the IDF is just lining civilians up in the streets and executing them en masse, I don't expect this to be persuasive, but I'm also concerned that Hamas's role in killing civilians directly and indirectly seems to be all but ignored. They're not helping at all.