So while the absolute hack of an excuse for AU journalism is going "OMG WORST NUMBERS EVAR", here's an attempt at a science based approach at why 400+ cases today was actually expected, and why FROM TOMORROW shit gets real.

I started my lovely spreadsheet once we had sustained number just below 100 per day. Anything below that suffers from trying to see trends in noise. One thing science works well with is data, and the MORE data you have, the better science you can generally do.

The things we know from experience locally and overseas in "Adventures with Public Health in a Covid-19 era" is:
*It takes 5-14 days for cases to manifest
*If you test more, you get closer to the "real" infection numbers
*10-20% of cases need hospital treatment
*2-5% need ICU

July 7th: Melbourne enters City Wide Stage 3 restrictions. Localised peak of 191 new cases.
Now we start the 5-10 day count before we expect to see any change in growth.

This means up to two weeks of increased cases, before numbers may start plateauing, let alone dropping

From a trendline calculated from my arbitrary date of 9th June, for the beginning of Wave 2 cases, I extrapolate where we could be.

+5 Days : 222 Cases per Day
+10 Days: 400 Cases per Day
+14 Days: 640 cases per Day

If Stage 3 restrictions are doing anything, we would expect to see deviations from exponential growth at these date ranges. Today was +10 days. We had 415 net new cases.

So we are on trend for exponential growth STILL, after ten days from implementing Stage 3 restrictions.

So today we are where we are "meant" to be. Yesterdays below curve growth was nice, but biostats are fuzzy af, and so some noisy deviation is to be expected. Today's numbers glued us back to the growth curve.

Shit aint changing, AHEAD of expectations.

But now its +10 days...

IF we hit 450->500 cases tomorrow, we have solid evidence that Stage3 restrictions ARE NOT WORKING. Probably for a whole host of reasons, quarantine fatigue, idiots paying attention to facebook/whatsapp more than Health officers and scientists, abject stupidity. Pick your poison.

But its tomorrow and the next 2-3 days numbers that have real impact. Do Stage 3 restrictions work? (i.e. maybe we need stage 4, cause this thing IS THAT INFECTIOUS). Do they work, but people aren't obeying them? (roll the army, roll the police, enforce the shit out of people)

But this is the data and decision in front of our premier and his advisors.

Do we need more restrictions because people are complying but its not working? Or do we need more adherence to current restrictions, so up the ante on penalties and enforcement?

Quick aside, Stage 4 may be done, simply for novelty factor, that it may get greater public compliance. It may trigger more "oh shit this is real" with more people.

It may also mean that we have maybe 60% compliance with Stage 3 at the moment ../

../ but Stage 4, means we get effective 90% compliance with equivalent Stage 3 restrictions, and that is enough to reduce spread.

Motivating mass populations is bloody hard to do.

Also NSW, you are basically 3 weeks behind us, and for some damn reason walking the EXACT SAME PATH.

Act early, or act at home.... or worse in hospital.