I hadn't noticed the rewards increase. Actually, they decreased for me. I was unable to post during the HF week, and the rewards of my posts that paid out that week were smaller than I had seen before the HF (not sure why, but I think it may be because someone upvoted my posts right after I published them and threw part of the rewards away :( ).

But I noticed my SP increasing! It was odd to suddenly see my SP increase by 0.001 or more over time even though I had done nothing to increase it (no rewards and no power-ups). Then I saw that the value of STEEM per MVests is increasing. It was 495.135 a few days ago, and now it's 495.188. Is this related to the "less people sharing the pool" factor?

I'm still not sure whether to be happy about this or not... I assume these effects are temporary. Once most accounts that stopped transacting resume their activities (provided that many of them have enough RC), the reward pool and the STEEM per MVests will be mostly back to the way they were before, won't they?