As mentioned we have very few infections over here and very few in hospital or deceased.
However, I read in the newpaper today that there has been a pretty large outbreak of summer cold. This is in itself not a problem as the disease is completely harmless, but the main point is that mode of infection is the same as for Covid-19 and in that respect it is just luck that it wasn't Covid-19 that spread widely. Or in other words, the current state of regulations (very limited) and peoples's behavior (more and more relaxed due to lack of infections) is not sufficient to prevent Covid-19 from spreading widely if there should be a second outbreak. It remains to be seen what happens after the summer holidays as we get visitors from abroad and after the holidays school and day care resumes and people go back to work.
Also, during the strongest restrictions in march/april the rate of all infections diseases dropped by a lot, these are now apparantly almost back to normal levels.
That's really interesting. One silver lining that several friends have commented on (and I've noticed!) is how nice it is not to have had a cold for a properly long time (I was just finishing one in February/March when the whole Covid thing kicked off, but haven't been sick since). It's also interesting how many of my sniffles are obviously just allergies/hay fever/dust, given some low level stuff persisted even when we were in total lock down.
The infection rates in most parts of London are very low at the moment, among the lowest in the UK. I hope that this may be a sign that (even with only ~20% of people having antibodies) we may be approaching some kind of functional herd immunity (i.e. people who have the most human contact e.g. shop workers, health workers, are now largely immune) BUT I think it's just too early to say (how long does immunity last? How about this t-cell stuff? There certainly doesn't seem to be a critical mass of scientists saying we are out of the wood, and even our bombastic PM apparently is going to say we are not out of the woods today, and urge people to be cautious: though sadly I would trust him as far as I could throw him based on his track record).
We have a big reopening this weekend in the UK (pubs and restaurants allowed to open, subject to restrictions, as are hotels, B&Bs, camp sites, hairdressers etc though still not gyms, pools, beauticians, weddings can happen but are limited to 30 guests and no reception, etc. - hence the PM having to go on telly to tell people to behave). I noticed them all getting ready dropping my daughter to school this morning, and in some ways it's lovely to have a bit of life back in the city, but it's scary too. I'm putting my Pollyanna hat on and deciding that it's fine, because it's all going to be young folks building immunity, and they're all going to be super-careful not to give it to Grandma or spread it around the supermarket (but I'm madly touching wood at the same time....)