NEW: lots of attention on ONS Infection Survey today, but some confusion over how it should (and should not) be used to asses whether England’s fall in cases is "real"
Quick thread:
Most attention has gone on ONS “% of people testing positive” metric showing a continued rise
But "testing positive" is a lagging indicator of cases. It estimates how many *have* Covid today, not how many are *catching it* today.
Fortunately, ONS has re-introduced its incidence data (blue line), which is a much better yardstick for cases, though always 2 weeks old 😩.
So how to resolve issue of one lagging indicator, and one that’s 2 wks old?
Look to Scotland, where cases peaked 2 wks before England, so ONS indicators have had time to catch up
Turns out ONS incidence fell at exactly same time as cases 🙂. ONS positivity likewise, just lagged
So we can apply that to England: if we adjust for the 2 wk lag for "testing positive", there’s no longer any contradiction between ONS and dashboard.
Dashboard says cases falling for the last week. ONS says they were still rising 2 wks ago, but can’t speak for the time since.
Finally, if we superimpose all three metrics for England (solid lines) on top of Scotland (dashed lines) and sync the peaks in cases, England looks to be pretty much exactly where Scotland was 2 wks ago:
Dashboard cases falling, ONS indicators on course to peak and then fall.
And indeed if we add in data on Covid hospitalisations in England, we see that both new admissions and total patient numbers appear to be roughly at their peak — exactly what we would expect with cases topping out 7-10 days ago
BUT if we’ve learned anything from last few weeks, it’s that the road at this point is anything but smooth.
Week-on-week declines in English cases have been slowing in recent days, suggesting we’ve slid down off the June/July spike, but may be settling into a more gentle decline
And changing patterns of behaviour (which in turn are influenced by weather) seem to be having a big impact.
The idea that one week’s trend will continue into the following week has never felt less solid.
Conclusions:
• Picture right now looks promising. ONS does not contradict the view that incidence in England is currently falling
• But August could be a bump road due to behaviour and weather
• And September brings school and uni, which will further stir the pot
Oh, and at the risk of stating the obvious, people should really also be following @JamesWard73 and @BristOliver for more granular updates on the situation in England
Some people have responded to that chart with "That can’t be right", or "We can’t be worse than America".
I’m afraid the chart is right. 15 years ago the UK’s record on homelessness *was* not too dissimilar to other developed countries, but things have rapidly deteriorated.
There has long been a gap between people’s views of crime locally (not a big issue) vs nationally (it’s terrible out there!), but there are signs this is now happening to economic perceptions too.
My finances? Going okay. The economy? Awful.
What’s going on?
My column this week asks whether the media (both mainstream and social) and its incentives to maximise engagement could be playing a key role ft.com/content/8cd76c…
With crime, it’s widely accepted that the main reason for this decoupling is media coverage.
People’s sense of crime levels is based mainly on what they see on TV and read in newspapers, and much less on what they or the people they know actually experience.
NEW: my column this week is about the coming vibe shift, from Boomers vs Millennials to huge wealth inequality *between* Millennials.
Current discourse centres on how the average Millennial is worse-off than the average Boomer was, but the richest millennials are loaded 💸🚀
That data was for the UK, but it’s a similar story in the US. The gap between the richest and poorest Millennials is far wider than it was for Boomers. More debt at the bottom, and much more wealth at the top.
In both countries, inequality is overwhelmingly *within* generations, not between them.
And how have the richest millennials got so rich?
Mainly this: enormous wealth transfers from their parents, typically to help with buying their first home.
In the UK, among those who get parental help, the top 10% got *£170,000* towards their house (the average Millennial got zero).
American politics is in the midst of a racial realignment.
I think this is simultaneously one of the most important social trends in the US today, and one of the most poorly understood.
Last week, an NYT poll showed Biden leading Trump by less than 10 points among non-white Americans, a group he won by almost 50 points in 2020.
Averaging all recent polls (thnx @admcrlsn), the Democrats are losing more ground with non-white voters than any other demographic.
People often respond to these figures with accusations of polling error, but this isn’t just one rogue result.
High quality, long-running surveys like this from Gallup have been showing a steepening decline in Black and Latino voters identifying as Democrats for several years.
The politics of America’s housing issues in one chart:
• People and politicians in blue states say they care deeply about the housing crisis and homelessness but keep blocking housing so both get worse
• Red states simply permit loads of new homes and have no housing crisis
And if you were wondering where London fits into this...
It builds even less than San Francisco, and its house prices have risen even faster.
That cities like London & SF (and the people who run them) are considered progressive while overseeing these situations is ... something
Those charts are from my latest column, in which I argue that we need to stop talking about the housing crisis, and start talking about the planning/permitting crisis, because it’s all downstream from that ft.com/content/de34df…
NEW: we often talk about an age divide in politics, with young people much less conservative than the old.
But this is much more a British phenomenon than a global one.
40% of young Americans voted Trump in 2020. But only 10% of UK under-30s support the Conservatives. Why?
One factor is that another narrative often framed as universal turns out to be much worse in the UK: the sense that young generations are getting screwed.
Young people are struggling to get onto the housing ladder in many countries, but the crisis is especially deep in Britain:
It’s a similar story for incomes, where Millennials in the UK have not made any progress on Gen X, while young Americans are soaring to record highs.
Young Brits have had a much more visceral experience of failing to make economic progress.