Back after a short Cornish break, during which the run rate has continued to fall.
189k total doses is down 28%, and 1st doses of 77k are down nearly a half. The 7D total has fallen under 1m, as the number left to do declines, as we'll see next.
1/
18-39 progress:
Over 30 there's little movement now. Under 30, we've probably got around 1.1m still to jab, assuming a final take-up of 72.5%.
Let's look how the numbers have moved over the last week next.
2/
You can see here how little movement there's been in the last week over 30, probably now mainly picking up those making slightly late decisions to get the jab. It's disappointing how poor NI is in comparison to the other countries though.
3/
Under 30, W looks also to be mopping up the last few. E and S are still making reasonable progress, but again NI looks very disappointing, being barely above 50%.
4/
England progress:
We're now 2 weeks from Stage 4 unlocking, so this broadly represents the likely level of protection that will be in place on the 19th.
Given poor (~35%) efficacy after 1 dose, there will still be around 15m adults under 50 without 2 dose protection.
5/
2nd doses of 111k and the 7D total remains at just over 1m a week, consistent with first doses 8 weeks prior. It should drift up to c1.5m a week soon, but no more unless the time period is reduced below 8 weeks.
6/
During the 4 week delay in moving to Stage 4 (allowing for the 2 weeks for protection to kick in), we've jabbed 4.9m with the first dose, and 5.8m with the second dose, rather less than one might have hoped for given the urgency because of Delta's transmission advantage.
7/
It's still not too late to have the jab, and with infections surging again, if anyone is still hesitant but wavering, it's worth remembering that the weakened link between infection and serious illness we can see in the data, is only for those protected by the vaccine.
8/8
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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.
3/
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.
2/
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.
3/
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.
2/
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.
1/
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?
2/
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.