I think most are holding off cause there’s no need to actually power up stuff or evolve if they alrdy have decent counters.

I took 8 months off and recently came back and aside from not having a couple legendaries or smack down ttars I haven’t fallen behind at all. Machamps, golems, alakazams, espeons, exeggutors, scizors, gengars, my bite/crunch ttars, dragonite, Gyarados, rhydons, my couple mewtwos, a few legendary birds and dogs etc are still as relevant as always and all I need to short man raids like I was almost a year ago.

I’m sure others like me are holding off too but it’s not cause of fear, it’s cause there’s no need to do anything evolve / power up wise.