and if you prefer to look at the case data instead of growth rates, here it is:
and if you just prefer numbers, here are two to consider:
- England cases in 20-24 age group, specimen date 28th June: 4510
- same figure 7 days later, on 5th July: 4548
(and yes, I know there could still be some late tests reported for that date tomorrow or thereafter)
so cases are still going up in this age group, but only just. and yes, if you want the bad news, we had ~2000 more cases reported than expected today, which might be (at least in part) the effect of a football match last weekend. so we're not out of this yet. but still.
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So it’s time for me to come off the fence re 19th July. I’m in favour of:
a) Opening up on 19/7, but with stronger mitigating baseline measures than the govt is proposing
b) Opening up vaccinations to 12-17s as supply permits, starting with the vulnerable.
Long🧵follows...
I’m very conscious that many people will disagree with something I’ve said there, and possibly all of it. And I have good friends on all sides of these debates, who I don’t want to lose. So it may help to say: just because you oppose (or support) vaccination of teenagers…
…doesn’t mean that I think you’re a psychopath. And just because you might support extending regulations for another few weeks, doesn’t mean I think you’re a “bedwetter”, or uncaring about those who have suffered during lockdown. So I’d be grateful if you…
As usual, Monday’s modelling thread produced some excellent questions, and apologies that I wasn’t able to answer all of them. But as a small corrective, I’d like to offer answers now to four of the most common / relevant questions, in a short thread:
Q1: what happens if you vaccinate teenagers? As it happens I did look at this, but ran out of time & space to give you the results on Monday. The short answer is that it doesn’t make much difference to the model results, because I’m assuming that...
…(as per @PaulMainwood analysis) we don’t have enough mRNA supply to vaccinate more than a small % of teenagers before September, and by then the summer wave is mostly over. The one exception is in the scenario (below) where we delay opening…
This is my new favourite graph of the week: case growth rates down (or roughly flat) over the last week in nearly every age group. There’s just one fly in the ointment: rising growth in the 90+, which is not the group I would choose for that pattern.
Here’s the more familiar graphs by age group, starting with the 0-30s:
There’s plenty of bad news on the dashboard this evening, with hospitalisations and deaths joining cases in growing by over 40% week-on-week. But is it just me, or does that case curve look like it’s starting to curve over to the right?
Of course, this will be no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the age-stratified growth rates over the last week. And the pattern here continues, with growth rates continuing to fall in the under-30s:
I’m not going to do a very long model update thread, because it’s a busy week at work and I do actually need to get some sleep at some point. But I thought you might appreciate some headline conclusions from the latest version, as it might help inform the debate re. 19 July 1/n
I’m also not going to give you a policy recommendation, because it’s a genuinely tough call, and as usual I’m going to take it to the wire before getting off the fence (and I’ll stop the mixed metaphors there, before I do myself a nasty – if imaginary – injury). 2/n
So as usual I’ve updated to all the latest data and made a few other adjustments in an attempt to get as close as possible to a genuine “central view” i.e. as likely to be wrong on the upside as the downside. This week, those changes have included: 3/n