[manwe150]

Your statements seem mostly correct to me, but may be read in a misleading manner to imply the prevalence of colds is similar this year to past years. That data also does exist somewhere (since it was used to compute the plot in your first link), it just isn’t shown in that particular plot. From comparison to the paper, we seem to only have plot 1 for 2020, and not plot 2. Plot 1 (rates) showed the relative effects, but we need a link for plot 2 (counts) for 2020 before we can make statements about the absolute effects.

Hope that helps clear up the misunderstanding. And if you have a link to the counts data also, do share!