The ONS has added to recent analyses of relative mortality by vaccination status with a new release today, using age-standardised mortality rates (ASMR).
TLDR: COVID death rates for fully vaccinated people are much much lower.
1/
Note the report does include number counts, but clearly states that the priority ordering of the roll-out makes these comparisons of limited use. Also many of the deaths were at a time when vacc'n coverage was very limited.
Hence the focus on weekly age-standardised rates. 2/
Looking at the underlying data, we see that in the last four weeks of the analysis, ASMRs for COVID deaths have been 10x higher for the unvaccinated.
Note also the increases approaching the early July peak.
3/
ASMRs have also been around 75% higher in the unvaccinated group for deaths that weren't registered as being COVID related. That's a very interesting finding. Might it suggest that COVID is actually a contributory factor for even more deaths than we thought? Or maybe...
4/
... it's partly or predominately due to the other demographic factors that influence the non-vaccinated population (ethnicity, deprivation etc) which means the unvaccinated have a generally higher mortality rate.
5/
Another point noted is that for "breakthrough" deaths (ie amongst the fully vaccinated), a much higher proportion are immunocompromised (13%) than for COVID deaths generally, reinforcing the additional vulnerability of this group.
They've also tended to be slightly older.
6/
Age-standardised analyses are the best way to look at mortality comparisons, particularly when we have populations of varying age profiles (as the vaccine roll out means we have seen here).
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.
2/
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.