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I don't know if it would have been that high, but the whole (initial) idea of "flatten the curve" was exactly that. Saturated systems stop working as expected. When hospitals reach capacity then neither covid nor non-covid patients will get adequate treatment.

"Questionable efficacy" in what sense? You can argue that possibly for transmission, but certainly not for endpoints like death. See the recent Lancet study, for example.

the earlier strains were probably more deadly than the ones we have now, no? just due to the nature of how viruses work that's my hypothesis.

I assume those excess deaths would've come because of the failure of health system and its inability to aid curable cases of Covid