UK people, do we have all these varients because we did lock down?

What I'm saying is that initially I remember that we were going to do the herd immunity option. People would have been free to take any precautions they want but every where would have been open.....

.... That way, the disease would have burnt through the population a lot quicker and consequently, burnt out a lot quicker. Then it would have had less time to evolve. Then we wouldn't have all these varients.

Anyone have any opinions on this?

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Graylight · 51-55, F

Here's the thing: Herd immunity requires a 75% exposure and infection rate to become an option. While you could let a virus burn through a population, two things would happen. One, considering what - 5-25% of a nation's population has become infected. At the 75% required for natural herd immunity, we'd be talking about billions of deaths worldwide. Plus, variants are free to evolve as the virus is exposed to harmful elements and learns to adapt to them.

Thing is, we control the evolution and adaptation of cells just as much as we control the trajectory of an unknown virus. The variants would likely occur regardless of what measure humans have taken.