"they are more transmissible, more likely to evade immunity"
Intrinsic severity of the virus doesn't change the fact it is the most transmissible virus we have ever seen in the world.
Even if it is intrinsically less severe than previous variants, because we are allowing it to spread to EVERYONE in the world we are seeing a much worse impact. Did you miss that in the US alone we've had over 160k deaths from COVID-19 just in the last 6 months of this year? No other virus has had this level of death in the same timeframe.
It's not. Measles, for example, is more transmissible.
> No other virus has had this level of death in the same timeframe.
Not true. Spanish Flu, for example, killed more both in raw numbers and proportionally in a similar time frame.
Here's a helpful infographic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadli...