The latest #antibody study from @ONS is out, and shows continued increases in all four countries, with 🏴 now topping 90%. 👏👏
E🔼from 86.6% to 89.8%
W🔼from 88.7% to 91.8%
NI🔼from 85.4% to 87.2%
S🔼from 79.1% to 84.7%
Here's a visual summary of the last three reports.
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Note that although the reports are fortnightly, the last one moved the data on three weeks, this one only one week. So that's one reason why the increases are lower. Also, as we get closer to 100%, there will be a natural limit to the increase possible.
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You can see that in the youngest age groups, the level of antibodies is around twice the vaccination coverage, with naturally acquired antibodies making up the difference. (ie they have had COVID at some stage.)
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The previous report data showed that there was already a very slight reduction in levels in the 80+ group (as we saw after one dose), but encouragingly that's not present in the latest data.
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Curiously though, those countries with less data (and thus wider confidence intervals) all show a reduction at the oldest ages, whereas there's little sign of it in England.
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There's very little difference in levels by region now, with any vaccination take-up difference (notably London) offset by higher naturally acquired immunity.
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Report here. Note that it runs to around 3 weeks ago, so always has a lag when considering recent vaccination (and now population infection) levels.
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.