In the first 6 months of 2020, Australian influenza deaths were down over 90%, attributed to Covid anti measures - mostly increased hand washing/sanitising, social distancing, and school closures.
If we assume that's representative of a 90% reduction in flu and cold cases (not guaranteed, but probably a reasonable estimate to reason about), then perhaps instead of "hundreds of millions" of cases, it might be down to "tens of millions of cases" of cold/flu. So maybe 9 million Covid cases means any cold/flu symptoms are somewhere between 50% and 10% likely to be Covid - a virus currently killing ~1% of the people it infects.
I am certain the prudent thing to do in 2021 is assume _any_ cold/flu symptoms are likely to be a virus that's quite capable of killing you (and/or the people around you) and act accordingly until you are 100% certain it's not. (Which probably means 2 negative PCR tests ~10 days apart.)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-23/coronavirus-restricti...
If we assume that's representative of a 90% reduction in flu and cold cases (not guaranteed, but probably a reasonable estimate to reason about), then perhaps instead of "hundreds of millions" of cases, it might be down to "tens of millions of cases" of cold/flu. So maybe 9 million Covid cases means any cold/flu symptoms are somewhere between 50% and 10% likely to be Covid - a virus currently killing ~1% of the people it infects.
I am certain the prudent thing to do in 2021 is assume _any_ cold/flu symptoms are likely to be a virus that's quite capable of killing you (and/or the people around you) and act accordingly until you are 100% certain it's not. (Which probably means 2 negative PCR tests ~10 days apart.)