Few thoughts on UK COVID data.
There’s good news and bad news.
But the good news is that the good news outweighs the bad IMHO.
Let’s start with cases. They’re growing in the UK at a decent snap, albeit not as fast as winter. You can see this better in the log chart (2)
But the real question is not just about cases but whether they’re turning into deaths.
That was the case for most of the pandemic: look at how correlated these lines are.
But now look bottom right. Do they seem to be diverging? Looks like it (albeit still quite early days)
That brings me to the most encouraging bit of data out recently: the case fatality rate of the Delta/Indian variant vs Alpha/Kent and others.
Look! While 2% of those catching Alpha died, the CFR for Delta is only 0.3%. Massive improvement.
It’s hard to overstate how big a deal this is. Clearly death is not the only consequence of #COVID19. There’s long covid, most notably.
Even so, the fact that a far smaller % of people are dying is incredibly good news.
Early data, so will need to monitor it. But still… 🤞
And in case it wasn’t already clear, this is not a consequence of the variant itself, which seems on the basis of early evidence to cause MORE hospitalisations. It’s because so many people are vaccinated that only a small % are catching it and even smaller are dying of it.
Now clearly deaths always lag cases, so we need to be cautious and look at as many datapoints as poss to test the thesis that the link between cases & deaths is weakening. Let’s look at hospital admissions.
Again, note the correlation during winter. And some divergence recently.
The pattern is somewhat less clear than with deaths because while deaths are flat, hospitalisations are growing. But look at the growth rates.
Cases going up 4.7% over the past fortnight. Admissions up 3.4%.
Doesn’t sound like a big difference but in practical terms it’s enormous
Extrapolate these lines forward (simple projection based on past 14 day growth rate) and here’s what you get by 19 July:
40k #COVID19 cases a day.
560 hospitalisations a day.
So. On “Freedom Day” the caseload could be 2/3 of the winter peak!
Sounds scary, right…
But 560 daily hospitalisations represents only 13% of the winter peak.
Far more manageable for the NHS.
You see the issue.
Even as UK lifts lockdown, one key statistic, the one we’ve prob focused on the most during the pandemic, will be at levels which hitherto rang alarm bells
It’s a tricky one. We’ve spent the past 18 months telling ourselves that sure as night follows day, cases => hospitalisations => deaths.
And while there’s clearly still a link and people are still suffering, this heuristic is nowhere near as powerful as it once was.
Which is why this point matters. It will be very easy in the coming weeks to take case numbers and make them look utterly terrifying. But the reality is much more nuanced. And that’s going to be v tricky for all of us to internalise.
None of this is to say the numbers aren’t, well, a bit unnerving. The ONS data now suggests cases are on the way up too, so it’s not just the dashboard (tho the @ONS infection number is still a tad less steep than the gov.uk numbers)
Look at the breakdown of UK nations and Scotland looks like it’s going through the ceiling. A while back this would be an instant red flag. But again: remember that the equation has changed. High cases don’t necessarily mean high hospitalisations/deaths
Let’s not forget that in comparison with where many epidemiologists thought we might be now, we’re doing incredibly well.
This is the Imperial chart of what might happen to hospitalisations as lockdown was eased.
Right hand chart is what happened (the circular dots)
One other thing worth bearing in mind: part of reason UK cases are rising so fast is the delta/Indian variant. Nearly all UK cases are now Delta. But most of the rest of Europe is basically now where the UK was a month ago.
Chart is delta % in various countries:
Also worth bearing in mind it needn’t have been quite like this. It’s quite plausible UK could have staved off arrival of Delta. (Tho it would prob have got here in the end).
Still, answers from govt abt why it waited so long to put India on red list remain unsatisfactory. Cf:
🧵
80 years ago today, newspapers in Europe carried news of the unexpected death of a very important man, in a hotel miles from the nearest city.
A man who, said some, was helping the Allies win the war.
But there was a twist to the tale. The man in question wasn't actually dead
That man was John Maynard Keynes. The 61 year old economist was at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire for what became known as the Bretton Woods conference. And the day earlier he had indeed collapsed, following a heart attack. It was a moment of high drama.
The conference had already overrun.
It was supposed to be done in two weeks and there was talk that the delegates would soon be kicked out of the hotel. This was, to put it lightly, a problem.
After all, in the absence of an agreement there was a chance of yet another world war
It says something about how confusing Labour's green investment policies are that seemingly even the Treasury has misunderstood them.
Contrary to what the picture in this press release👇 suggests, the National Wealth Fund has nothing to do with wind power or indeed green energy
Instead it's very specifically designed to focus on all the low or zero carbon technologies that AREN'T really to do with generating power.
- Green steel
- Hydrogen
- Clusters
- Gigafactories
Here's the sectors the institution will focus on 👇
Simple way to think abt this:
Pretty much ALL heavy industry today emits carbon, directly or indirectly. The techniques we use to make stuff mostly date back to the industrial revolution. Getting to net zero involves redoing the industrial revolution! edconway.substack.com/p/yet-another-…
🧵
How did Keir Starmer manage to win a landslide majority even though fewer people voted for him than for Jeremy Corbyn in either of his election bids?
A quick thread looking beneath the numbers.
Let’s start with swing…
Election nerds like to focus on two-party swing - essentially showing how voters shifted between the main parties.
And on this metric, Labour enjoyed a MASSIVE swing. 11%. Slightly more than Blair in 1997.
But there’s more to this chart than meets the eye…
Let’s take the same data, two-party swing, & break it down. Red bits of bars show change in Labour vote, blue bits show Tory change.
Now look again at that 2024 bar (on the far right).
The vast, vast majority of swing to Labour is in fact swing AWAY from the Conservatives.
🧵THE STRANGE CASE OF THE YAKOV GAKKEL🧵
A thread about the energy story no-one wants to talk about.
About how UK companies are helping facilitate Russia, as it earns money to finance its war.
And about how the cost of living crisis didn't end quite how you prob thought it did…
But before all of that it's a story of a ship. A v unusual ship.
The Yakov Gakkel. A vessel that routinely passes these shores. As I type this it's somewhere north of Norway. But I first saw it in the English Channel.
And at first glance you might not think it all that special..
But beneath that enormous blue hull is some incredibly advanced technology. Because the Yakov Gakkel is a cutting edge liquefied natural gas tanker, capable of holding vast amounts of natural gas at temperatures of approximately −163 °C.
These things are pretty incredible!
🧵You know the idea, posited by @theIFS, that the main parties are engaged in a "conspiracy of silence" this election.
Their original point was about spending plans.
But I think you cld go much further.
I can think of at least 5 other areas where there's a conspiracy of silence
1⃣Taxes ARE going up under all the main parties' plans.
But they prefer not to talk about this, hiding instead behind the claim that tax rates on income tax, NICs and VAT won't rise. But they've still signed up to plans which will mean the AMOUNT of taxes we're paying will rise.
2⃣The magical tax avoidance money tree.
All the parties think they'll raise enormous sums clamping down on tax avoidance.
So much that they need not raise other taxes. This is v uncertain. But since they've all done the same trick they remain silent about its ridiculousness
🧵
You've probably heard this claim - both from @rishisunak and more recently from @Nigel_Farage 👇
UK has leapfrogged others to become the world's fourth biggest exporter! And all after Brexit!
Unfortunately the reality is somewhat less impressive than this sounds.
Here's why:
First thing to say is that the bare bones of the claim are certainly true.
Between 2021 and 2022 the UK did indeed rise from 7th in the league table of the world's biggest exporters (counting both goods and services) to 4th.
We'll get to why this happened in a moment. But still
However here's some (very) important context.
It's not like the UK has only JUST hit fourth spot. In fact, it was in 4th place in 2020. And in 2015, 2014 and 2013.
Actually if you look at the modal average of our position in the past decade it was... fourth.