NEW thread: here’s the latest data on how vaccines are fighting Covid.
My India tweets earlier were grim, but these are more optimistic
Vaccines are working in the UK ✅, working in the US ✅, and contrary to alarmist reports, they’re working in Chile ✅ ft.com/content/d71729…
First, some more detail on the UK.
Cases, hospital admissions and deaths have fallen steeply among all groups (the 'restrictions effect'), but have fallen furthest and fastest among the older, most-vaccinated groups (vaccine effect).
(For anyone wondering why the UK deaths lines are getting bumpy, that’s a good thing:
The numbers are now so small — 20 Covid deaths per day — that random variation starts making things look noisy)
And it’s not just the very elderly who are benefiting. This chart (concept from @JamesWard73) shows that as UK vaccinations have progressed down through the age groups, so has the vaccine effect, with under-60s the latest to join the party.
It’s amazing how clear the pattern is!
Next, to France, where a third wave has hampered progress, but the same tell-tale signs of vaccinations are evident
Cases and hospitalisations rose in March, but climbed far slower among the most-vaccinated age groups. Deaths kept falling among the elderly despite 📈 among young
The resurgence of the pandemic in France — and many other countries in recent weeks — was fuelled by the arrival of the 'UK variant' B.1.1.7.
By March, it had become the dominant variant across all of Europe and is now spreading across North America.
B.1.1.7’s arrival in the US threatened one of the world’s most impressive vaccination rollouts, but as in France the data suggest the vaccines are prevailing 🙌
B.1.1.7 sent hospitalisations rising, but only among the [less vaccinated] young. Rates among elderly continue to drop
Sternest test for vaccines has come in Chile, where China’s Sinovac jab was rolled out during a third wave.
But again, the data suggest they’re working.
ICU occupancy has more than doubled among younger adults 📈, but is falling among age groups prioritised for vaccination 📉🙌
It’s the true that Sinovac is less effective than the likes of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna, especially after one dose (read @DubeRyan’s WSJ story here wsj.com/articles/first…), but after two doses, it delivers good efficacy and is keeping people out of ICU, saving lives.
So we now have clear, real-world data from many countries showing that third wave or no third wave, B.1.1.7 or no B.1.1.7 (and there’s lots of P1 in Chile, too), the vaccines are reducing infections, reducing hospitalisations and reducing deaths 🙌
To be clear, the planet as a whole is still far from out of the woods.
Many countries are still battling new outbreaks. The situation in India is dreadful, and it has so far only delivered a first dose to 8% of its population.
(UK 49% ,US 39%, France 19%)
Aside from India, Latin America remains a grim hotspot.
Uruguay has reported a surge in its daily Covid-19 death toll from 1.15 per million on March 1 to 18.55 on April 15, putting it third highest in the world. Deaths are still climbing right across the continent.
Greater availability of Covid-19 data in the western world has at times given the impression the US, UK and Europe have been the hardest hit, but a more comprehensive analysis shows Latin America has unquestionably suffered the most, with all of the top five death tolls worldwide
(NB there’s no comprehensive excess deaths data in India, but local news reports show that Covid deaths are being vastly undercounted in districts across the country, so if India was in that global chart I would it expect it to be climbing the rankings)
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…
NEW: we often talk about an age divide in politics, with young people much less conservative than the old.
But this is much more a British phenomenon than a global one.
40% of young Americans voted Trump in 2020. But only 10% of UK under-30s support the Conservatives. Why?
One factor is that another narrative often framed as universal turns out to be much worse in the UK: the sense that young generations are getting screwed.
Young people are struggling to get onto the housing ladder in many countries, but the crisis is especially deep in Britain:
It’s a similar story for incomes, where Millennials in the UK have not made any progress on Gen X, while young Americans are soaring to record highs.
Young Brits have had a much more visceral experience of failing to make economic progress.