Data is skewed because of testing restriction to the most likely infected group - international arrivals.
A regrettable necessity caused by lack of testing capacity, but a logical restriction in the circumstances, since preventing spread is the primary goal, not creating data capable of assessing community spread.
That is the next step, which will happen as enough kits become available.
In the meantime, we await the emergence of direct evidence of community spread demonstrated by the number of infected who are reaching a level of respiratory distress that prevents hospitals from turning them away, and whose infection cannot be attributed directly to the limited number of infected who have been tested.
Some comfort or despair might be derived from that first wave, contingent on how many turn up. Of course, a low figure will be seized on by some as proof its nothing to worry about, by others, that measures taken proved sufficient.
I don't think the number will be low for several reasons:
Cruise ship passenger dispersal, late air travel restrictions and early returnees and tourists not self-isolating, (Bali?!) the reporting of symptomatic locals refused testing, asymptomatic school children presumably infecting some percentage of their parents and the initial slow uptake of social distancing.
Regarding distancing and hygiene, I honestly saw a guy picking his nose while shopping in the supermarket today - that bewildered me.
Evidence of tremendous transmissibility is nevertheless evident in other countries, and also, in the number of arrivals here who are infected. They either got sick in the country they came from, or conceivably, even during a 20 hour plane journey home.
It is the lack of meaningful community spread data that underlies the need to reduce contacts until the first wave of untested, but infected and in respiratory distress, fully hits our hospitals.
If we could have tested more, then decisions could have been based on a more reliable data model, but we couldn't.
The numbers appearing in the first ICU arrivals effect has just begun, and lasting weeks, may give a broad hint of probable scale.
However, regardless how many present at hospital emergency in the next few weeks, reliable data, suitable for modelling and estimation will still have to await more widespread testing. After that, some tracing, tracking, quarantine and treatment.
As for bright spots - 'asymptomatic children'.
The world would have already lost its collective mind if children were equally susceptible to serious and fatal symptoms. Let's fervently hope no mutation occurs causing it to be so.
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