If we had counted the cases of existing Coronaviruses before Covid would we be seeing the same figures?

[Xmastimes]

I was pondering this earlier. BC (before Covid), if we had been able to test and report cases of coronavirus in the community would the figures have been more or less than the figures we have seen for covid 19?

Possibly a very daft question but I am genuinely wondering whether existing colds and flu circulated in greater numbers anyway …

How would we know I suppose, we never used to measure it I guess?

On average adults have 2-3 colds per year and children 6-10. They aren’t all coronaviruses but many will be. For the whole population that might be a total of 180m colds per year. So probably more colds than covid cases though we don’t really know how many covid cases there have been.

Around 20% of the population get flu per year so 13m cases. That’s around 35k cases per day with more of those in winter. So maybe lower than covid cases at the moment but similar to what we saw with delta when things stabilised.

I’ve concluded from that that we’re unlikely to get very low cases again unless in lockdown or a revolutionary vaccine comes along.