High case numbers earlier in the year…

[Cookingbynumbers]

Do areas that had a bad time with covid earlier in the last year have it a bit easier now? Just idly wondering over lunch.
Where I am we had very low rates all through the first year of covid. Very few people I knew had it, kids bubbles didn’t shut in school, other than the national lockdowns we had no real issues.
Also not a big tourist area.
Since the schools are back it seems like cases have soared. Of my colleagues my immediate team of 4 all have it now, except me. They’re all double jabbed and seem to be recovering well, thankfully.
My kids schools have been emailing daily and there are now cases in all year groups, PHE are now involved as it’s an ‘outbreak’.
It just got me thinking, are those areas where it was awful before still really bad now? Places like Leicester, the north east, Manchester, that seemed under relentless restrictions. It would make sense to me that they might not be so bad just at the moment if many people had already had it.

It seems some people just aren’t bothering to test now.
If they aren’t seriously ill I guess they don’t want to be told to isolate and have their contacts informed.

It’s a shame that these people that are avoiding testing may go on to infect people that might not be so lucky to have a mild version.

I would guess the actual infection rate is a lot higher than what is being reported.

I have to agree. I think schools going back and compulsory LFT's meant higher case numbers the last couple of weeks but testing has reduced and so has case numbers. However, I don't think hospitalizations will reduce. This happened before too. People think if they don't test they can ignore it.

My district was at one point highest in the country (after having originally been spared tier 4 when the rest of the county went in it)
Now it seems to be that we're having waves through the different parishes/wards, but overall the district has been consistently below national average over the last 3 months and according Zoe we've had a massive drop in the last week.

I think that is why the rhetoric is changing from focusing on case numbers to hospitalisations. The case numbers are less relevant. There could be 100000 a day but if 999990 of those are mild, it doesn't matter. I agree, the infection rate is probably much higher than we know and can be masked by asymptomatic/mild cases not testing. What can't be masked is the number of sick people getting admitted, getting put on ventilation. That is where the true impact lies, and that's what we're going to have to watch carefully over the next few weeks.

Sorry my post was in response to @SonnetForSpring

I certainly think a lot more people will not have a test for fear of isolation.
I also think there will be a lot more people with simple coughs and colds staying/working from home then before.
Before, there would always be people in offices etc with coughs and colds who would act the martyr and go into work and spread it around, now I think they will be too worried to do that incase people automatically assume COVID for some reason.

Well my dcs school (secondary) was shut early at the end of last term as 1,000 (ie 50%) of its pupils and staff either had cv or were self isolating as close contacts.

This term is going ok so far but obviously it's hard to compare. There's def cv around, my kids both know people who tested positive in the last few days but its unclear how it might develop.