NEW: England has recorded 18 successive days of week-on-week declines in cases, its longest sequence of declines since February, suggesting its autumn/winter wave may have peaked ft.com/content/e11add…
Crucially, hospital admissions, patient numbers and deaths are now also trending downwards, as the fall in case numbers has shifted from being youth-driven into all age groups.
These acute indicators look to be topping out at 10-20% of last winter’s peak levels.
A key factor here has been England’s booster rollout.
Antibody levels in the oldest groups (vaccinated the earliest) had been slowly eroding as the months passed, but in the last 5 weeks they have shot back up as third doses have gone into arms 💉💉💉💪💪💪
The result is that rates in England are now falling fastest for the elderly. This is true both for cases...
...and for hospital admissions.
Of course, this data is noisy and there are many factors that could explain why rates may fall faster or slower among one group than another, but the combination of third doses, antibodies, cases and admissions paint a persuasive picture.
So the situation in England looks promising. What of the rest of Europe?
No country is avoiding the winter wave, with cases climbing right across western Europe, and acute metrics following suit. Several now exceed UK’s peak cases & ICU patients, and may soon exceed on deaths.
The picture is worse in central Europe, where ICU occupancy and death rates now exceed UK levels in almost all countries, and are still rising fast.
Looking further east, many countries’ waves began earlier and now look to be subsiding, but they’re subsiding from staggeringly high levels, with several nations setting new records for deaths almost two years into the pandemic.
Another way of looking at this is to measure each metric for each country relative to its peak level before this winter.
When we do this, the impact of vaccines is very clear, and shows up in two ways:
First, the simple height of the current wave.
In countries with high vaccine coverage, cases remain well below past peaks.
Where vax rates are low, peaks have been exceeded, in some cases shattered...
...and second, the ratio of the acute metrics to cases.
In well-vaxxed Netherlands and UK, cases have climbed close to past peaks, but hospitalisations & deaths remain at lower levels
But in countries where many are yet to get their 2nd dose, deaths rise in lockstep with cases.
Among richer western European countries, there is growing concern over the situation in German-speaking countries, where numbers of people yet to receive a single dose are much higher than elsewhere.
I’ll end this roundup with a note of caution for England/UK.
I know I started this thread with good news — and the news is good! — but we need to consider the context in which these numbers are unfolding.
NHS waiting lists soared during the pandemic with 1.5m more people now waiting for treatment, and as hospitals try to work through the backlog, there’s incredibly little headroom in the system.
If we look at critical-care beds only, you can see how the dynamics play out.
Hospitals can repurpose general beds for ICU, but not without cost. Capacity for non-Covid critical-care patients was halved last winter due to the Covid wave.
To be clear, there is absolutely no sign that we will see Covid admissions get anywhere near last winter’s levels. But more people in hospital seriously ill with Covid means fewer other people being treated for serious, life-affecting illness and injury.
To conclude:
• Promising signs English/UK wave is receding, aided by boosters
• Rest of Europe’s winter wave in full swing, with particular concern for poorly-vaxxed countries + Germany, Austria, Switz.
• When NHS says current situation is very tough, they’re not making it up
As usual, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, feedback, criticism.
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Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by @Moreincommon_
The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.
And to the extent that people thought they were either too left or right wing, equal shares gave each answer.
There’s one very clear message and anything else is a distraction.
When asked what were the biggest mistakes the Conservatives made in government, the common themes are not left or right, but:
• Mismanagement
• Lack of integrity
• Incompetence
• Dishonesty
• Corruption
• “They are chaotic”
The lack of enthusiasm for Labour at this election really is striking.
Among those who plan to vote Labour tomorrow, the party is much less well-liked than in 2019, 2017 or 2015 (no data before that).
Quite a flimsy voter coalition that could unravel in the absence of results.
The Conservatives weren’t especially popular with their backers in 2019 (mainly a vote for Brexit and against Corbyn), and this was a big part of why they fell so far since then, but Lab voters this time are even less enthusiastic about their party than Tory voters were in 2019.
Of course, all that matters tomorrow is winning more seats than the opponents, and Starmer’s Labour will manage that very easily.
But if they don’t start delivering tangible results, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see Labour start bleeding votes in all directions.
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).