The Case Against Levelling-Up
Would Lockdown Level 5 Really Fix our COVID Problem?
Updated: 7/10/2020 to adjust the time for confirmed cases to be hospitalised from 7 days to 14 days and from confirmed cases to fatalities from 14 days to 28 days.
Over the last couple of days there has been a flurry of reporting and speculation about Ireland’s current COVID status and what it will mean for our lockdown level, not to mention the prospect of a leap to Level 5. The airwaves lit up with argumnets for and against this, but often without the supporting evidence. In what follows I will attempt to summarise the three main arguments that I have heard, and the relevant supporting data.
As I wrote this it was announced that the country would not be moving to Level 5, and instead all counties would move from Level 2 to Level 3. Will this work?
Today’s cases are not comparable to April’s cases.
Today’s case numbers are not the same as case numbers from April because we weren’t testing then and so there was much more unconfirmed infection back then than there is today.
