The latest ONS infection survey shows dramatic falls across the UK, with England falling by over 40% and Wales by 50% in just one week. (Data is to 24th April.)
E falls from 0.17% to 0.10% or 1 in 1,010.
W falls from 0.12% to 0.06% or 1 in 1,570
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There are slightly less dramatic falls in Scotland and Northern Ireland, though still very encouraging.
NI falls from 0.15% to 0.11% or 1 in 940
S falls from 0.18% to 0.16% or 1 in 640.
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Regionally, only Yorkshire and Humber now rounds to 0.2% (actually 0.19%).
In the opposite corner the SW is now shown as 0.0%, though is actually 0.03% or 1 in 2,980.
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It's a similar picture by age, with the over 70s now recording 0.04% or 1 in 2,830. However, we can still see meaningful levels of prevalence in the school years, although these are falling too.
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New infections are also falling in England to a low of 3,600 per day, around half the 7,100 reported last week and down from 15,000 just 3 weeks ago. (There's less certainty about the trends in the other countries because numbers are much lower.) 5/6
In England there were just 151 positive tests out of 136,078 tests over the most recent two week period.
Overall these are an exceptionally encouraging set of numbers as the gradual easing of restrictions continues. Good news!
A great thread on the state pension and National Insurance.
For me, the trailed abolition of NI and thus its replacement by general taxation in terms of funding state pension benefits will have a major generational redistribution of tax.
It’s been the case that (in aggregate) at any one time the working generation funds the SPs of the retired generation above it.
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If the abolition of NI results in an increase (albeit smaller - else why bother) in income tax, whilst those in work will in total be better off, pensioners will be worse off.
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The Pensions & Lifetime Savings Association has updated its guide to living costs in retirement. The full report is well worth a read, and goes into a lot of detail.
One key point is that it assumes that pensioners own their home outright - probably reasonable now, but the shift to renting means that in future years that may become increasingly questionable.
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It focuses on retirement income, but note that other sources may be used to fund retirement, whether it be income from savings/investments, or gradual withdrawal of capital. Much more likely to be relevant for those aspiring to a comfortable lifestyle of course.
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UKHSA estimates that prevalence of COVID in England and Scotland has nearly tripled in the month since the ONS restarted its COVID infection surveillance.
Fortunately prevalence is lowest at the oldest, more vulnerable age groups, but is estimated at just under 6% in the 18 to 44 age groups.
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Prevalence is estimated to be highest in the London area, at just over 6% across the population. Note though that confidence intervals are wider due to lower sample sizes than in previous studies.
So with the news this morning that the earnings growth announced today means the state pension (SP) will very likely increase by another 8.5% next year, it's time to set out once again why the SP triple lock (TL) is such a bad idea.
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It's all down to cherry-picking the best of the three rates each year. I did a thread nearly a year ago, that hopefully sets out clearly how the mechanism inevitably means that the SP will grow over time against both earnings (E) and prices (P).
With BH's still distorting individual weeks' figures, the cumulative position gives a better view, with the latest CMI age-standardised analysis showing mortality 3.8% (of a full year's mortality) worse than its reference year of 2019.
Here's the mea culpa - it was only wrong by a factor of 13, but at least the post has been deleted rather than just corrected and left up, when experience shows that only a fraction of the original audience will see the correction.
So what are the true numbers?
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In E&W the peak week in 2020 was just under 9,000, and the second wave peak was pretty close to that number.
In total ONS has recorded 199,728 COVID related deaths in E&W since the pandemic started.