People are talking some amount of nonsense today. https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/1283077914393706497

Spikes, 2nd waves, "back to where we were in March!", it's all those bloody tourists, there's a horde of flesh-eating robots on the way too from Bristol!

I'll lay out some more sensible things you can do to analyse daily updates.

1. Bookmark this - https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea

It gives the 14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000.

It gets updated daily. You want low numbers.

-EU/EEA average is hovering between 12.1 and 13.5.
-Ireland is hovering between 3.0 and 3.8

I.e. We're doing great.

To get on the Green List of Safe Countries the number countries look for is "below 10" but given the EU average is closer to 13, some countries are flexible over 10.

Anything under 10 per 100,000 is considered low and stable infection.

Repeat: Ireland = 3.6 = doing fab.

2. Bookmark this - https://covid19ireland-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/ 

It'll show daily hospital admissions (been 2 in last 24 hours).

500+ a week is a surge, 250 puts strain on hospitals, 100 a week is normal flu-season level admissions.

Hospital Admissions:

April 23rd-30th: 286
July 7th-14th: 25

25 admissions over the past week is basically 4 people a day in the whole country needing a hospital stay.

It means most hospitals in Ireland are not seeing a single covid case from one end of the week to the next.

This is really good.

3. Back to our friend again https://covid19ireland-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/ 

Scroll down to Tests Completed last 7 days:

You'll see 49,264 and it'll also give past 24 hours (6,318).

I'll lay it out visually:

Tests Completed last 7 days: 49,264
Positive tests: 157
Negativitiy rate: 99.7%

You don't need any skills at maths.

Just quickly look and make sure we're still doing a heap of tests.

If you see it's a boat load of tests, then you know feck all people are testing positive. This means they're turning over rocks to find a very-well-contained virus.

In a resurgent spreading virus, a heap of tests will uncover a heap of positives. You would be looking closer to 95% negative, whereas we are at 99.7%.

Mass testing + low positivity rate = ideal.

That's where we are at right now.

If we had 32 cases every single day for the next 14-days, we'd be at 8.9 per 100,000 14-day incidence.

We'd *still* be far below the EU average and *still* on all Green Lists of Safe Countries.

Because we did so well as a society, we have lots of leeway now on all metrics.

Here's what you would typically see in a resurgent virus situation (all 4 in conjunction):

1. Rising 14-incidence
2. Rising hospital admissions
3. Rising ICU admissions
4. Rising positivity rate.

Ireland are low and stable on all 4 of those metrics.

I think a concept people miss is that 1 single day case numbers don't mean a lot.

It's why ECDC use 14-day incidence and why the likes of NPHET and Public Health England track the 3-day and 5-day incidence internally.

You want clear patterns of the spread of a virus.

There are no clear patterns of spikes or 2nd waves at all.

The situation remains excellent and stable.

Keep washing your hands and avoid indoor crowds, it'll stay stable. Go to house parties and take the piss, it won't.

Speaking of which...

To the guys & girls at that house party in Kerry seemingly still ducking the contact tracers - they're not the cops going to lecture you, they're trying to make sure you're ok?

FFS medical professionals couldn't give a monkeys how you got sick...

Answer the call, get tested.