Hi pedes,

I'm sick of getting into arguments with people over the need/justification for a lockdown as I'm sure you all are, so I've put together some information/cheat sheet that you can use to inform them when they try to move the goalposts.

We've all heard #flattenthecurve but I don't think many people actually remember what it was all about.

The whole concept of flattening the curve was to implement community isolation measures that keep the daily number of disease cases at a manageable level for medical providers. (https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-flatten-the-curve.html)

Well, some places did this and others didn't; and through a simple data analysis you can tell if the lock down actually did anything or not.

Let's take a look at 5 different examples that did different things.

Sweden - Did nothing https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Spain - Full lockdown https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/

Ireland - Full lockdown https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/ireland/

United States - Varied https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Australia - Varied https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

Scroll down to the "total corona virus cases in X" graph, click the "logarithmic" tab and have a look at how each of those curves look.

Pretty similar, right?

This is where people get confused. They will say "no, that's logarithmic!"

So, why logarithmic?

Well, the logarithmic scale is ideal for measuring rates of change, particularly rates of growth. A logarithmic graph flattens out the rate of growth so it becomes easier to see. Even though the overall numbers are still increasing, it allows you to see the point at which the rate of growth starts to level off and when that exponential growth has stopped. At that point, the logarithmic scale makes it possible to see when public health measures are starting to have the desired effect.

(read more here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/covid-19-spread-logarithmic-graph/)

So knowing this, and looking back at the curves, Sweden didn't lock down at all yet their curve looks exactly the same...

They didn't see their hospitals get overwhelmed...

Their economy is in much better shape then other places in Europe...

From this you can infer that the lock down measures didn't really change anything because both curves flattened regardless.