NEW: people worry when they hear "40% of hospitalisations are fully vaxxed", but this chart shows that's actually good news.
The more people you vaccinate, the higher their share of hospitalisations, but the *total* number in hospital is a fraction of what it would otherwise be
If fewer people are fully vaccinated, a smaller share of hospitalisations will be fully-vaxxed too, but this is not a good thing:
Overall there will be a lot more people in hospital because far more of the population is unprotected.
In other words: if you want to know whether the vaccination program is working, don't focus on whether the fully vaxxed make up 40% or 12% of hospitalisations.
Focus on whether the hospitalisation rate is 270 per million or 684 per million.
And since this is Twitter, I've prepared the same thing in meme form
But back to charts:
All the data we have suggests vaccines are working remarkably well. Far beyond what had been hoped for a year ago.
For example, a fully-vaxxed 80-year-old now has the same risk of dying from Covid as an unvaxxxed 50-year-old. That's an enormous drop in risk!
And we can see the game-changing impact of vaccinations clearly in the English hospitalisation data.
If it weren't for vaccines, more Covid patients would have been admitted to hospital yesterday than at the height of the winter peak. Instead we're 75% below it.
...which features other excellent lines like this from @anthonybmasters, who has a brilliant seatbelt analogy for vaccines
And finally you should also read @TimHarford's latest, which discusses the "fully vaxxed share of hospitalisations" paradox alongside other features of the pandemic which defy our intuition ft.com/content/0f11b2…
As always, if you have any questions, comments etc please leave them here or DM, and I'll do my best to answer as many as possible 🙏
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NEW: probably the most important Covid chart I’ve made
As Delta goes global, it’s a tale of two pandemics, as the heavily-vaccinated Western world talks of reopening while deaths across Africa and Asia soar to record highs
A huge thanks to everyone at the FT who made this possible. Both the rest of the brilliant data/visuals team, and the editors and reporters across the rest of the FT who really *get* the power of data journalism more than any other newsroom I've encountered.
We're not in the business of making charts to dress-up stories. We make charts that *are* the stories.
Thread: first up, that core data: UK admissions, patients & ventilator bed numbers now all climbing
An obvious initial point to make: whilst the rate of increase in cases is just as steep as it was last autumn, the hospital metrics are climbing more slowly.
This is good news (!), but it comes with nuances that point in both an optimistic and pessimistic direction.
The pessimistic: until recently admissions in Wales and Northern Ireland were falling steeply, which was countering rises elsewhere and making UK totals flatter than they would otherwise be.
In the last week, admissions have risen in every UK region but one: the East of England.
Let’s take a closer look at that chart
• Cases have been rising at a similar rate to previous waves for some time now
• What’s new is hospital admissions now undeniably following suit. In North West, admissions rose by 30% in week ending May 30th. Since then they’ve climbed 40%
This is despite vaccines that offer good protection against hospitalisation, so what’s going on?
As ever, age breakdowns tell the story. Hospital admissions remain low and flat among mostly-double-dosed older groups, but the increase is coming among younger adults.