Daisymae apart form anything else, many of those who died in the first wave would live in this wave because when COVID struck, it was entirely new and doctors just did not know how to treat patients with it. Since then as we know there are drugs tried and tested, techniques and equipment tried and tested and you have only to look at the way hospital admissions and deaths have not risen in proportion to new cases reported compared to earlier this year to see how those now becoming ill have benefitted.
Secondly, and this is brutal, most of the weakest and the illest in society died in the first few months. These were mainly in care homes where homes were forced to take back from hospital residents with the disease, there was inadequate testing and severe shortages of PPE. Care homes now have fewer residents and I would suspecct that they are generally healthier on average than before COVID struck and adequate testing and protective clothing is available.
Yesterday it was reported that 26,000 more people have died at home over the last six months than over the same time last year, very few of those died of COVID. The others died from heart attacks, strokes, cancer and diabetes, mainly because they were too afraid to go to hospital or because they were denied timely care and treatment because of the way everything was being concentrated on COVID.
My daughter was nearly one of them, when inadequate attention and time was given to make all the checks that she should have had when she tried to see a GP and a minor problem had become life threatening by the time her GP sent her for appropriate tests.
Taking everything all in all, I can see no reason, unless the virus mutates and none of the therapies now in use are of any use on the mutated virus, why deaths this time round should be other than a fraction of the number of deaths we had earlier in the years.