That would be nearly 700k deaths in the uk assuming everybody eventually got infected. That's a lot.
It also allows for mutations which may eventually become more deadly.
Lock downs, whilst they don't effect me, I am married with kids and can work from home, and indeed have been for nearly 2 years. I realise for some they are emotionally and financially devastating
The government should have left simple measures in place and the decision not to was driven by a handful on idealogical grounds.
Hopefully this variant is no worse than delta and its not back to the start with vaccinations.
The IFR from the UK studies was estimated a 1.1% last year, reliable study, good healthcare, large amount of infection, large amount of data. So 98.9% survival would be more accurate. Most others were in the 1-1.4% range, depending on various other factors and differing degrees of healthcare.
But, that 98.9% is for situations where healthcare is not overwhelmed, but no lockdowns = overwhelmed healthcare, so the IFR could have easily doubled for us. India had an estimated IFR of 4% in their April wave.
The mutation for Omicron is seemingly from Alpha lineage (pre-vaccines), but dates back over a year from when case 1 got the infection, but this was also in a country that had not started vaccine rollout.
I first read this from Francois Balloux, or got the link from him, and the other geneticists are thinking that it has come from an immuno compromised Aids carrier, who has basically had it for a year, and has mutated and mutated, which is why it has the 30 odd mutations. So this mutation has likely not been effected at all by vaccines, or vaccine evasion, it's came from someone before there was even vaccines available.
Delta was the same, they think this mutated prior to wide vaccine rollout where it was mutated. The mutations would happen regardless, the way I understand it.
Obviously early days on this, but there's some info here: