NEW: a deep-dive into the situation in India, where a devastating second wave is overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums, eclipsing global records as it goes ft.com/content/683914…
250,000 new cases every day, and test positivity is soaring suggesting many are still missed
To put this into a global context, much has been made of the resurgences in Europe and North America over recent weeks, but India’s wave has accelerated straight past all of them.
The situation there really is beyond what we’re seeing anywhere else worldwide.
In many parts of the country including the capital Delhi, cases are doubling every five days. Compared to the steady rise seen in the first wave last year, the current climbs are almost vertical.
And in many places, test positivity is rising at the same pace. Even as more and more tests are done, the share of them that come back positive is still climbing, suggesting tens of thousands of cases are going undetected.
All of this is feeding through into a crisis in hospitals beyond what we’ve seen anywhere else in the world over the whole pandemic.
ICUs are twice as full in Nagpur as they ever got in Lombardy last March. Mumbai’s ICU’s are more full than Liège was in Belgium’s brutal peak.
The stories on the ground are grim.
Authorities have taken emergency measures, requiring than any and all oxygen produced anywhere in the state be sent to hospitals as supplies run out.
With thousands simply unable to find a hospital bed, death tolls are mounting at a similarly rapid pace.
But a look at this chart shows another issue: although official Covid death counts are rising, the numbers themselves remain incredibly low.
And I stress in-*credible*
Essentially, none of those numbers are correct; all are vast undercounts.
I collated local news reports (HT @muradbanaji) across seven districts, finding that overall, numbers of Covid victims who have been cremated are 10x larger than official Covid death counts in same areas.
If applied nationally, that would mean that instead of 1,700 deaths per day, India is currently seeing 17,000.
And as more reports come in, that undercounting estimate has been rising, so the true toll may be higher still.
Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by @Moreincommon_
The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.
And to the extent that people thought they were either too left or right wing, equal shares gave each answer.
There’s one very clear message and anything else is a distraction.
When asked what were the biggest mistakes the Conservatives made in government, the common themes are not left or right, but:
• Mismanagement
• Lack of integrity
• Incompetence
• Dishonesty
• Corruption
• “They are chaotic”
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).