Another thing. Both @Presidency_ZA and the Minister of Health have suggested that ‘hotspots’ will remain so declared until they have fewer than 5 active cases per 100 000 population. What does that mean?

2/7 Well, for the Cape Town metro, that means 200 - 250 active cases. If the epidemic were stable and one allowed for even only 10 days from reporting to death or recovery, this would mean fewer than c. 25 new infections per day. (Both assumptions are wildly naïve).

4/7 Worldometer gives the number of _reported active_ cases and population estimates. Of 49 countries with more than 10 000 ever-reported cases, only Japan, S Korea and China would meet the ‘not a hotspot’ definition.

7/7 But then, with the announcement last night, we should no longer be surprised if there is neither sense nor reason in the ‘science’.

6/7 This criterion was a thumbsuck, with no obvious grounding in sense or reason.

3/7 If one looks at international dashboards (yes, I am highly critical of them; but this is a heuristic and they give the absolute lower bound of cases, so for this purpose, it is conservative.) …

5/7 2 (UK, Netherlands) do not provide data on active cases (but neither likely to meet the threshold required). Current active cases (as reported) per 100 000 national population: US 346; Italy 88; France 137; Germany 13 …