NEW: Covid cases, hospitalisations & deaths on the rise again across Europe, with rates of all three metrics surpassing the UK in many countries
Starting in the west: Belgium, Netherlands & Germany in particular experiencing sharp increases in not only cases but ICU & deaths too
And the picture worsens as we move further east.
In central Europe, cases were a fraction of UK levels over summer, but have now rocketed past, with ICU occupancy and deaths also climbing fast.
Vaccine coverage is generally lower here than in western Europe.
In eastern Europe, the situation is dire.
Romania, Bulgaria & Latvia all set new records for daily deaths in recent weeks, and deaths are 10x current UK levels.
In much of western Europe it can feel like the pandemic is an echo of its past self. Try telling that to the east
If we extend our gaze even further east, *11 countries* have set new records for Covid deaths in the last few weeks.
It genuinely stops you in your tracks. Think back to December 2020, and a dozen countries are now going through that or worse, a year after vaccines came on line.
An important nuance to what we’re now seeing in western Europe:
Earlier waves over summer were mainly confined to the young since older groups were protected by the vaccine, but the current wave is rippling through all age-groups, hinting at waning immunity.
This is remarkably similar to what we saw in Israel in the summer, when — just like in western Europe now — around 5 months had passed since most older adults’ second dose.
Of course one difference here is that vaccine coverage in western Europe is now at similar levels in all age-groups, and we would expect that alone to reduce the youth-skewed case distribution.
Nonetheless, seeing strong rises across all age-groups is a problem.
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My wish for the next election is that poll trackers look like the one on the right 👉 not the left
This was yet another election where the polling showed it could easily go either way, but most of the charts just showed two nice clean lines, one leading and one trailing. Bad!
Pollsters and poll aggregators have gone to great lengths to emphasise the amount of uncertainty in the polls in recent weeks...
But have generally still put out charts and polling toplines that encourage people to ignore the uncertainty and focus on who’s one point ahead. Bad!
The thing about human psychology is, once you give people a nice clean number, it doesn’t matter how many times you say "but there’s an error margin of +/- x points, anything is possible".
People are going to anchor on that central number. We shouldn’t enable this behaviour!
We’re going to hear lots of stories about which people, policies and rhetoric are to blame for the Democrats’ defeat.
Some of those stories may even be true!
But an underrated factor is that 2024 was an absolutely horrendous year for incumbents around the world 👇
Harris lost votes, Sunak lost votes, Macron lost votes, Modi (!) lost votes, as did the Japanese, Belgian, Croatian, Bulgarian and Lithuanian governments in elections this year.
Any explanation that fails to take account for this is incomplete.
Many of the NHS’s difficulties can be traced back to the deep cuts in manager numbers.
Fixing this doesn’t just unblock waiting lists, it also gives doctors more time to be doctors, and alleviates the stress and poor morale that come from having to do things that aren’t your job
Here’s another fun NHS low hanging fruit example:
A trial last year found that by running two operating theatres side by side, they cut the time between operations from 40 minutes to 2, and were able to do a week’s worth of surgeries in one day thetimes.com/uk/article/lon…
In what might be one of the most significant trends I have ever charted, the US obesity rate fell last year.
My column this week is about this landmark data point, and what might be behind it ft.com/content/21bd0b…
We already know from clinical trials that Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs produce sustained reductions in body weight, but with mass public usage taking off — one in eight US adults have used the drugs — the results may now be showing up at population level.
It’s really striking how the Corbynite left has migrated to the Greens.
The result is a curious coalition between the older and more Nimby environmentalist base, and the new hard left/progressive influx.
These are quite different people with quite different politics!
In 2019, one in ten Green voters was from the most progressive/left segment of voters; now that’s one in four.
Big difference in policy preferences, priorities and pressure on the leadership, as we’ve seen in e.g reaction to Denyer’s Biden statement.
The most glaring tension between these two types of Green is on decarbonisation, where the older Nimby base doesn’t want pylons *or even onshore wind farms* but many of the new progressive Green vote do.
Greens are actually less keen on wind farms than Labour and Lib Dem voters!