by Dr. Young Lee
Hi Guys!
Fonsi makes an appearance - I'll try to have better pictures of him next time. I'm writing this at night and that's best picture I've got at the moment. Let me know if you want more pictures of him. He looks bored.
Updated website with daily COVID-19 numbers!
I couldn't find a good website that showed daily new numbers of cases. All the websites show the cumulative number of cases - this is not super helpful as it's hard to tell the trend. The number of cases will of course keep going up. What we want to know is -are the number of new cases starting to go down?
Anyway - I combed through the data and made my own charts. Can't trust these news channels to give useful information. So annoying. I'll update the number daily - check the following link on our practice web page to see DAILY updates of the COVID-19 numbers:
Please share with your friends if they want to see the data. I will give an explanation of the graphs below.
This is the graph you see everywhere. Horrible isn't it? The numbers just keep going up. The problem is - it doesn't really give that much useful information. It doesn't give us an idea of the trends. What we want to see is if the total number of new cases is slowing down. It's awfully hard to tell when you see a graph like this.
News outlets basically keep showing this stupid graph and it's hard to make much of a conclusion out of this.
"The number of new cases keep going up!" - well - duh. We all know it's going to keep climbing for now. Quite a few reasons for this - it takes about 4-5 days or longer for test results to come back, so anyone we tested today - the numbers will look higher in 4-5 days. Also - quite a few of the returning Kiwis from overseas would be infected. When we find new cases - their contacts will be tracked down and tested - and so new cases will be found.This is the graph what we should all be looking at. Unbelievably - you can't find this damn thing anywhere. I even asked my classmate - who's a pathologist looking at the cases to give me something. In the end, I just looked at all the numbers myself, counted them and made my own graph. It just seems ridiculous that this doesn't just exist somewhere - given that it's actually the most useful graph to look at.
As you can see - our numbers are actually flattening out. This is happening much fast than expected, given that we only went into lock down on Thursday 26 March 2020. It means that New Zealanders have by far and large been compliant and limiting the spread. However - we might see a few big jumps later as clusters of the virus are found - and the contacts that are traced are tested.
The good news is that infected people are likely in lock down as well - so they are not going to give it to anyone else. Our biggest danger at the end of lock down (remember aim for 8 weeks as this is the international average) is - some returning Kiwis from overseas will just infect all of us again. Now - before you start shouting - "Lock them up! Lock them up! Close the borders!" - do remember that some of these people are your relatives or your friends that you might quite like.
Final thoughts
Don't be complacent - we look like we're improving, but it only takes a few idiots to start infecting people again. So we should aim for complete isolation for as long as it takes until they are no more local transmissions.
We are winning. The lock down seems to be working. The current strategy is showing results quite quickly. The government should be applauded for their quick action after they noticed the numbers were starting to explode. If we had waited 3 more days, a 3 month lock down would be more likely than a 1-2 month one.
We are still open - call or email us for advice, or to make an appointment. If you don't know if you need to be "seen" - ask us and we can help triage you. The reason we are still open is because life keeps going on and people are still going to get sick from other things - other than COVID-19!
If you're new to us - and you want to find out more about us, go to: https://www.baysidemedical.co.nz/
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