I'm not doing this ever again as it was a bigger ordeal than the Leaving Cert but here's a comprehensive overview of how August went and how things are looking in Ireland.

August:

Cases: 2,654
Deaths: 14
Case Fatality Rate: 0.52%

Deaths by month (notified):

March: 71
April: 1,161
May: 417
June: 89
July: 25
August: 14

Lowest mortality month in the pandemic, will discuss a couple of the factors involved later on in thread.

Cases by month:

April: 17,165
June: 411
August: 2,654

-A big increase after summer stability but not close to the peak.

Hospital admissions by month:

April: 1,933
August: 41

-I'll get back to why all of these cases are not leading to hospital admissions (yet) in August.

Anyone who closely follows daily stats will know that it's more than 80 hospital admissions when you tot up geohive hub figures for August.

Those are provisional updates, whereas the HSPC number of 41 is the thorough number after data validation (45 denotified cases in August).

Testing for August:

Total tests: 188,552

Lab tests: 121,421 (64.5%)
Hospital tests: 67,131 (35.5%)
Negativity rate for month: 98.7%

That's an enormous workload, on top of testing for everything else not Covid, so thank you to medical scientists, GP's, everyone involved.

Hospital admissions by age for August (to 26th):

0-4: 1
5-14: 0
15-24: 3
25-34: 7
35-44: 5
45-54: 3
55-64: 2
65-74: 7
75-84: 5
85+: 2

ICU admitted by age for August:

0-4: 0
5-14: 0
15-24: 0
25-34: 1
35-44: 2
45-54: 2
55-64: 2
65-74: 2
75-84: 1
85+: 1

Deaths by age, August:

85+: 3
75-84: 7
65-74: 2
55-64: 1
45-54: 1
0-45: 0

No deaths under 45, but 3 ICU admissions in the 25-44 age range.

A reminder not to assume that you're bulletproof against Covid19 just because you're young.

Cases by type, August (% of August cases):

Healthcare workers: 192 (7.2%)
Meatplant related: 447*** (16.8%)

***HSPC figure is 330 cases for period July 18-Aug 15, I added in all the media reported cases I could find, it's a guesstimate and is probably too high due to overlap.

In terms of the overall pandemic breakdown in Healthcare workers:

Cases:

Women: 79.3%
Men: 20.7%

Nurse 2,777
Healthcare assistant 2,306
Doctor 537
Porter 98
Other HCW 2,009
Not Specified 889

You can read in more depth here:

https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/covid-19casesinhealthcareworkers/COVID-19_HCW_weekly_report_22%2008%202020_v1.0_HPSC%20website.pdf

April:

Cases: 17,165
Cases in over 65-years-old: 4,923
% of cases over 65-years-old: 28.7%

May:

Cases: 4,107
Cases in over 65-years-old: 784
% of cases over 65-years-old: 19.2%

August:

Cases: 2,654
Cases in over 65-years-old: 156
% of cases in over 65-years-old: 5.8%

What you should see is both in real terms and proportionately, older people are accounting for far fewer cases lately.

This has been a steady downward progression each month and is a large reason why so few people are dying compared to April.

The problem that we see in France and Spain, is widespread infection makes it very hard to ringfence elderly people away from.

In the past week, France has seen a 74% increase in symptomatic cases and that represents 56% of all new cases.

https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/maladies-et-traumatismes/maladies-et-infections-respiratoires/infection-a-coronavirus/documents/bulletin-national/covid-19-point-epidemiologique-du-27-aout-2020

This isn't just increased testing catching asymptomatic people in France.

It's over half of their new cases being sick people, and deaths will lag behind that trend as we witnessed previously in Florida.

It will also happen here if cases don't get reduced soon.

From Week 32 to Week 34 in France, you see a steady rise in symptomatic cases, mirrored by a rise hospital admissions.

That process (lag) took about 4 weeks, so I'm not counting chickens here.

Age is the biggest factor but there are other reasons people are not dying as much.

Hospitals had 6 months of Covid19 and are constantly adapting.

ICU survival rate in Irish hospitals is a whopping 80.1%, relative to global ICU survival rate of 60%.

(Global comparisons not overly fair as some countries hospitals were overwhelmed). https://epigram.org.uk/2020/08/18/university-of-bristol-involved-in-international-covid-19-study-on-icu-mortality/

Regardless of how it stacks up internationally:

-Far fewer older people are getting Covid19 in Ireland.

-And proportionately fewer of those are dying because they are in supremely capable hands, who understand treating the virus better now.

That's 2 factors among many.

14-day cumulative cases per 100,000:

Brazil: 252.5
USA: 180.8
EU/EEA average: 54.6
Ireland: 31.2
Canada: 15.3
Australia: 10.1

EU average was 12.0 at the end of June, so everything is going completely pear shaped, nearly across-the-board with the exception of Latvia.

I don't have a crystal ball but September will almost certainly be the worst month for Europe since May, given recent trends.

That includes Ireland.

But remember we still have agency on the future, by wearing masks, washing hands, giving a few meters distance :)

I saw people getting mad at the scene in Killarney.

Those young people had a very hard year, at an age where they should be having the best summer of their life.

Less judgement and more encouragement for them to stick to smaller parties. Love not hate. (Just my opinion)

Doing well relative to Europe but badly relative to where we were.

Doing well preventing death but not good on cases.

More understanding and support needed for younger people, sick-pay for all, and remove the stigma around coming forward for a Covid19 test.