Very clear, and informative analysis by Dr John Campbell (not an medical doctor, by the way - but rather an A&E nurse and teacher of nurses around the world) of the data around the lockdown, the testing of Covid and the true infection rates.
A very nice companion analysis to the piece posted by @spike below which agrees on some points and disagrees on others.
Bottom line, due to the lack of testing (indeed the policy of not testing) the case rates in April were most likely 50x higher than reported. As we have massively ramped up testing today (we are testing more than 3x the number daily, and have other types of surveillance in society) we are unlikely to be underestimated the true numbers of cases in the same way. This means that:
- April: we were seeing 250,000 cases per day at the height of the infection
- Lockdown resulted in an exponential decrease in the number of new cases
- Today: we are seeing maybe 10-20,000 cases per day (maybe less)
Today, we are nowhere near the peak we had, and it has been fairly low all through the summer, although it is starting to ramp up again as we head into autumn/winter.
This explains one of the things I have been puzzling over - why are the new cases apparently rising, but the deaths are nowhere near what they were? One answer is that even with the current rise in new cases we are nowhere near where we were in April. (Other factors include the fact that the care homes are not under the same attack, and that the average age of people getting ill now is much younger). If the trend upwards continues though, all bets are off for the winter.
It also means, as was pointed out in the discussion that @spike linked to, that the true infection fatality rate is likely to be somewhere in the region of 0.3%-0.5% making it about 3-5x as deadly as a bad flu, although specifically targetted at the more vulnerable members of society, the elderly and those with certain existing health conditions.
Trigger warning: Viewers should be aware that this video contains a positive reference to a potential vaccine as a solution! Close your ears for that part and continue - it is really worth it 
