In India, people started opening up during Sep/Oct 2020. I too relaxed the strict restrictions/rules that I was, till then, sticking to. Went to restaurants with friends and teammates (with masks wherever possible) and many people were doing inter-state travels, political events started happening, many festivals/gatherings started happening etc. Life was returning to normal. My important observation is that from then (Sep/Oct 2020) onwards, lots and lots of people were not following covid protocols properly. Social distancing was not followed. Many people did not even put on masks. Am not sure why, but even with all these behaviours which should result in increasing covid positive numbers, the covid positive numbers were continuously going down. I think it hit bottom during second half of Feb 2021.
And then the numbers started to rise - slowly from end-Feb to end-Mar and then suddenly very very steeply rise from end-Mar 2021. And by mid-Apr 2021, things got very alarming. Most of my circle of friends knew that generally the second wave will hit harder than the first. But we also that because vaccination has been going on for 2 or 2.5 months by then, it can help. The strictest (to follow the restrictions) among my friends also started to loosen up a bit. The previous reports that the second wave will hit us during Jan/Feb did not come true. So, we were hoping that there won't be a second wave. Even the US thought that they can start banning the export of raw materials needed for the production of vaccines in India.
So, I do not know if anyone predicted (with numbers to backup their estimates) that the case load will be this bad during Apr 2021. The second wave caught lots of us by surprise. But I believe, like the US and UK survived their second waves and are doing pretty well now, India too will hopefully emerge better and stronger.