The latest #infection survey from @ONS shows a dramatic increase in S, with increases also in W and E and a small fall in NI.
E 🔼from 0.19% to 0.22% (1 in 440)
W 🔼from 0.07% to 0.12% (1 in 830)
NI 🔽from 0.16% to 0.14% (1 in 720)
S 🔼🔼🔼from 0.17% to 0.46% (1 in 220)
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Here's the data, along with the Confidence Intervals.
It's clear that whilst the CI's are much wider for W/S/NI, the S increase is still very significant.
W has bounced around recently but seems to be on an upward trend too, as is E. NI appears more stable.
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Regionally, the NW and NE are still on the increase, whereas elsewhere it's a mixed picture. Albeit at lower levels the SW and East are rising too, others appear stable or even possibly falling.
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By age, the stand-out group is the Yr 12 to age 24 which is rising rapidly at around 40% each week currently.
Immediately above it's a different picture though, with a fall in the 25 to 34 age group. Older ages remain at much lower levels.
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The variant analysis shows how Delta is driving the increase in Scotland we're seeing. Elsewhere the numbers/increase in Delta appear flatter, but that's only because the scale has been extended to allow for the S figures and upper confidence interval.
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Survey results here.
The data is to 19th June, so does cover the first few days of the Euros, for anyone looking for a link between that tournament and increased social mixing in E/W/S.
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.