So inspired by @farmgeek sharing a plot for optimism, I'm going to share a plot to show I think he's right. We're going to go over 1000 cases today but we really shouldn't sensationalise this. The growth of cases is slow for the number of cases. Our joint action is paying off. https://twitter.com/farmgeek/status/1246250447284785152

So I discuss this a lot so please read all the tweets in this thread. First the bottom x-axis is date, so I start the date of when travel restrictions of entry to New Zealand were introduced. The y-axis is number of cases but on a logarithmic scale. So straight lines are...

...exponential growth. In orange are the number of cases while the blue and grey lines are two forecasts. The blue line is the forecast from the last eight days while the grey lines is the forecast of the increase before level 4.

We can see a change in the...

...gradient of the line at around 27th of March. This is about 12-14 days after the travel restrictions came into place. Early growth was driven by people flying into Aotearoa.

The current growth rate "today" is slower, still showing an exponential increase but currently the...

...doubling time is almost 8 days! So over the next week or two we need to see how these numbers track, they should start getting even flatter due level 4. Remember the lag time from action to change in the numbers is about 12-14.

One other thing here is to notice the...

...difference in the grey and orange lines. That difference probably would have been picked up by testing, it's a difference between 1000 and 10000! So while there might be more cases than we know about they might not even approach where we could have been.

Finally, not an epidemiologist but just looking at the data and I've been trying to learn.

But basically keep doing what you're doing people! Wash your hands and don't burst your bubbles!

If we stick with the level 4 restrictions then that line should have another bend ahead!