How many died before vaccine. How many after?
Dont know. no one has ever taken a human population, divided it in half to each group and counted. no one has repeated this experiment after 1 wave of covid, 2 waves of covid, etc, to see how much each wave reduces deaths by natural immunity/depletion.
At the moment deathes seem to be lower compared to previous outbreaks by a factor something like 1/10. We dont know how much of that is due to vaccine, how much to post infection immunity, or simply because many high risk are already dead.
You seem to be missing the point as things stand. Death rate falls something like x1/2 for every 4-5 years younger people are. That means the huge majority of deaths is amongst pensioners, and its generally considered pretty low risk below maybe 50. Especially if you separate out people with medical conditions predisposing them to covid. All that has been done in the Uk and all these people vaccinated.
if you look at the halving rate, assume death rate at top age group is 1, next 5 years 1/2, next 1/4, next 1/8... you get a mathematical series where most deaths are in the oldest age group. Thats true whatever starting point you take. it means vaccinating the oldest is far far more important than vaccinating the youngest in reducing deaths.
The public issue at the moment is only about vaccinating low risk people unlikely to come to harm from covid, most of whom remaining unvaccinated are now at more risk of dying from accidents than covid.
No case has been made that herd immunity is possible which might help protect older people, because all the experts are saying this is rather unlikely however many you vaccinate. Because vaccine does not work well enough at stopping reinfections.
Meanwhile, most covid cases have always been amongst the young, amongst whom few die. They have always been the reservoir of infection pushing cases into the older population. Get rid of that reservoir and deaths immediately fall because the old cease being infected. Many people survive epidemics not because they are immune or vaccinated, but because the disease never reaches them. So the strategy to minimise deaths has always been to get the epidemic over fast amongst the young and it will disappear amongst the old too. We did not do this 14 months ago, but chose instead to deliberately keep it going. That was the critical decision which went wrong.
Government is unwilling to admit we could have ended this long since with a much lower deaths total by letting the youngest segment of the population be infected fast. That wouldnt make the old safe, they would still have needed a vaccine when it arrived, but it would have made them safer until it did.
There seems quite a bit of evidence Hastings in the Uk had covid winter 19/20. Yet deaths must have remained within normal winter levels, because they did not create an alarm. An unrestricted outbreak seems to have been safer than the later ones with restrictions and lockdowns.
