NEW: big international Covid data thread, focusing on the contest between vaccines & variants
First to the UK, where things are looking very good. The vaccine effect is still crystal clear, with more than 10,000 lives already estimated to have been saved assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
And critically, rates of cases, hospitalisations and deaths are all falling among both the most and least vaccinated age groups.
Those straight blue lines represent constant rates of decline among the most-vaccinated, completely unaffected by the reopening of schools.
It’s not just the very elderly who are benefiting, either. This chart (concept from @JamesWard73) shows that as the UK’s vaccination rollout has progressed down through the age groups, so has the vaccine effect. It’s amazing how clear the pattern is.
And note how on the original chart, even the least-vaccinated age groups are seeing cases fall. This is also clear in today’s ONS update, which finds no surge among school-aged children.
All suggests vaccines are reducing transmission as well as protecting against infection.
But UK began vaccinating in a better position than most countries. B.1.1.7 was already being beaten back by strict winter lockdown (📉 lines both among vaccinated and unvaccinated)
Vaccines were tasked not with fighting a rising outbreak, but with accelerating an ongoing decline
Cross the channel to France, and things look different. There’s still a very clear vaccine effect 💉💪 but rates of cases and admissions have been rising even among the older, most-vaccinated groups.
This is what happens when vaccinations and B.1.1.7 roll out at the same time.
Key thing to note here is there’s nothing to suggest the vaccines are struggling with B.1.1.7 (as we also know from lab data).
The share of cases, admissions and deaths among the elderly (most-vaccinated) population continues to fall, in some cases even accelerating its decline.
But what the French example illustrates is that while a vaccination campaign is still in its early stages, vaccines change the *level* of an outbreak, they don’t change its *direction*.
The vaccinated are far less likely than the unvaccinated to catch Covid or become seriously ill, but if a new variant sends rates rising overall, they’ll rise among the vaccinated too.
In such a scenario the vaccines are very much still working, but they can’t turn back the tide
And this brings us to the US, where B.1.1.7 is now surging.
The US is a month or two behind France in this regard, but has a big head-start in terms of vaccination rollout.
There’s already a clear and well-established vaccination effect in the US, with hospitalisation rates falling fastest and furthest among the vaccinated.
But the steady overall downward trend may be coming to an end.
Michigan is leading a B.1.1.7-induced resurgence, with Covid hospital admissions climbing at a concerning rate. Other states are rising, too (read more here from @christinezhangft.com/content/805702…)
Going through a B.1.1.7 surge is no fun, and this will be no different in the US than it has been everywhere else
More people will be infected, more will be hospitalised and more will die. But the rapid US vaccination rollout means it will suffer much less than many other places
Which other places are those?
Test positivity rates are currently climbing in dozens of countries around the world, in some cases very rapidly. The US is seeing one of the fastest resurgences globally, but starts with much more vaccine protection than all other countries here.
Particularly concerning is India, where some thought herd immunity may have been reached.
It had not.
Case rates are doubling every 5 days in Delhi.
There’s insufficient sequencing to track variants, but it’s likely they’re involved (our story: ft.com/content/38f539…)
Testing has been expanded in India to keep up with the resurgence, but despite more testing, the percentage of tests coming back positive is still climbing.
Even on this more conservative measure, rates are doubling in under a week in many regions.
Lots of Latin American countries are seeing resurgences, with the Brazilian P.1 variant heavily involved.
This is especially grim news considering the region is already the hardest-hit in the world, with more than a million excess deaths already recorded
A lot of us might have thought we’d be on a relatively steady, linear path out of Covid by now.
The examples of France, India and Brazil show how the variants and or slow vaccine rollout can hinder progress to the finish line.
But there are still far more reasons for optimism than pessimism. One example: data from Israel suggests new variants are *not* escaping vaccine-acquired immunity
So don’t get me wrong, we’re on the way out of this. Several countries are very nearly there.
Here is a new chart that we should all be watching over the coming months, as countries seek to follow Israel’s lead and reach the Covid endgame:
For much of the last year, we’ve lived with restrictions to save lives. What we want now is for societies to reopen *without* risking illness & deaths.
That’s the bottom-right quadrant here: people spending more time socialising at bars & cafés, while cases continue to fall.
So there we are. This was a long thread, encapsulating weeks’ worth of our coverage, but I hope it’s been worth the wait.
As usual, do hit me up with any questions and comments, and you can keep track all of the FT’s Covid-19 coverage here: ft.com/coronavirus
One more note:
There’s been some alarmist reporting that the situation in Chile shows that its vaccination campaign isn’t working
The data suggest otherwise. As in France, rates are rising much more slowly [if at all] among the most-vaccinated age groups
The lack of enthusiasm for Labour at this election really is striking.
Among those who plan to vote Labour tomorrow, the party is much less well-liked than in 2019, 2017 or 2015 (no data before that).
Quite a flimsy voter coalition that could unravel in the absence of results.
The Conservatives weren’t especially popular with their backers in 2019 (mainly a vote for Brexit and against Corbyn), and this was a big part of why they fell so far since then, but Lab voters this time are even less enthusiastic about their party than Tory voters were in 2019.
Of course, all that matters tomorrow is winning more seats than the opponents, and Starmer’s Labour will manage that very easily.
But if they don’t start delivering tangible results, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see Labour start bleeding votes in all directions.
Some people have responded to that chart with "That can’t be right", or "We can’t be worse than America".
I’m afraid the chart is right. 15 years ago the UK’s record on homelessness *was* not too dissimilar to other developed countries, but things have rapidly deteriorated.
There has long been a gap between people’s views of crime locally (not a big issue) vs nationally (it’s terrible out there!), but there are signs this is now happening to economic perceptions too.
My finances? Going okay. The economy? Awful.
What’s going on?
My column this week asks whether the media (both mainstream and social) and its incentives to maximise engagement could be playing a key role ft.com/content/8cd76c…
With crime, it’s widely accepted that the main reason for this decoupling is media coverage.
People’s sense of crime levels is based mainly on what they see on TV and read in newspapers, and much less on what they or the people they know actually experience.
NEW: my column this week is about the coming vibe shift, from Boomers vs Millennials to huge wealth inequality *between* Millennials.
Current discourse centres on how the average Millennial is worse-off than the average Boomer was, but the richest millennials are loaded 💸🚀
That data was for the UK, but it’s a similar story in the US. The gap between the richest and poorest Millennials is far wider than it was for Boomers. More debt at the bottom, and much more wealth at the top.
In both countries, inequality is overwhelmingly *within* generations, not between them.
And how have the richest millennials got so rich?
Mainly this: enormous wealth transfers from their parents, typically to help with buying their first home.
In the UK, among those who get parental help, the top 10% got *£170,000* towards their house (the average Millennial got zero).
American politics is in the midst of a racial realignment.
I think this is simultaneously one of the most important social trends in the US today, and one of the most poorly understood.
Last week, an NYT poll showed Biden leading Trump by less than 10 points among non-white Americans, a group he won by almost 50 points in 2020.
Averaging all recent polls (thnx @admcrlsn), the Democrats are losing more ground with non-white voters than any other demographic.
People often respond to these figures with accusations of polling error, but this isn’t just one rogue result.
High quality, long-running surveys like this from Gallup have been showing a steepening decline in Black and Latino voters identifying as Democrats for several years.
The politics of America’s housing issues in one chart:
• People and politicians in blue states say they care deeply about the housing crisis and homelessness but keep blocking housing so both get worse
• Red states simply permit loads of new homes and have no housing crisis
And if you were wondering where London fits into this...
It builds even less than San Francisco, and its house prices have risen even faster.
That cities like London & SF (and the people who run them) are considered progressive while overseeing these situations is ... something
Those charts are from my latest column, in which I argue that we need to stop talking about the housing crisis, and start talking about the planning/permitting crisis, because it’s all downstream from that ft.com/content/de34df…