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.

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https://twitter.com/frances_coppola/status/1768551092097343708

It’s been the case that (in aggregate) at any one time the working generation funds the SPs of the retired generation above it.

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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.

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retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/2023_research_…
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.

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UKHSA estimates that prevalence of COVID in England and Scotland has nearly tripled in the month since the ONS restarted its COVID infection surveillance.

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gov.uk/government/sta…
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.

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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).

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https://twitter.com/john_actuary/status/1582789234032713728

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.

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https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary/status/1663968660745011207

That 3.8% of a full year's mortality translates to an excess of 9.3% of YTD expected mortality, or over 21,000 excess deaths.

Bear in mind that pre-pandemic, you'd expect mortality 4 years later to be noticeably lower, due to the previous improving trend.

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A great example of how @ABridgen will RT any old rubbish, despite how absurd the numbers look, if they fit the anti-vax narrative he is now pursuing.

Even the original poster has now admitted that the figures were completely wrong and deleted the post.

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https://twitter.com/_johnbye/status/1657159881869148166

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?

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Whether you enjoyed the coronation or hated the whole idea, you might be wondering how long it will be before the next one. The ONS has a handy calculator for how long the bunting might be stored away for, but bear in mind this is based on the average person of the King's age.
1/ That average will include people currently in poor health, and with very limited life expectancy. With no indication the King's health is other than good for his age, that will shift the curve more to the right.

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A great paper looking at the long term pensions landscape that well worth reading (as indeed is Heidi's summary thread).

My only criticism is that the report understates the value that annuities can still have, even if much less popular these days.

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https://twitter.com/Heidi_Karj/status/1648970776895270912

Annuities provide certainty of income and remove the uncertainty as to how long the pensioner will live, through pooling of mortality risk. They also remove ongoing decision making - especially important in the latter years of life.

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The latest age standardised mortality analysis from CMI shows that the total excess was high again last week at 9% after a few better weeks.

It's rather volatile atm though, so we shouldn't read too much into one week's figure.

1/ Highlighting the non-COVID related excess, after 5 weeks of a negative excess, it's back the wrong side of the x-axis. You can see the volatility though, and it's nowhere near the start of the year situation.

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The final ONS Infection Study shows that rates are still rising in three of the four nations.

E: Up 13% to 2.7%
W: Up 9% to 2.4%
NI: (See tweet 4)
S: Up 30% to 2.6%

Data to 13/3, except in NI

1/ Most concerning is the trend in the Over 70s, where by the final date the estimate is 4%, or 1 in 25 of that cohort. There's no apparent sign of it slowing, and whilst the last few days are always more unreliable, we won't be able to find out how accurate it is next week.

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I like @TheNewsAgents and its presenters, but this clip about the pension changes is badly misinformed. @lewis_goodall says that no tax will be payable on pension pots with the abolition of the Lifetime Allowance. That's just not true.

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https://twitter.com/TheNewsAgents/status/1636438431365513233

Here's what he says. In summary "none of a £2m pot will be taxable". So, why is it completely wrong?

In that example, you'll be able to take out around £268k as a tax free lump sum. The rest will be taxable when taken out at the marginal rate.

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With just two more to come, the results from the ONS infection study, show flat prevalence in E and W, and increases in Scotland and Northern Ireland (albeit NI from a much lower base).

E: +3% to 2.4%
W: -3% to 2.1%
NI: +18% to 1.4%
S: +10% to 2.4%

Data to 28/2.

1/ Here's the bigger picture - the latest wave appears to be flattening off at the lowest Omicron level yet (but note more recent hospital data has picked up again).

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Another positive week for E&W mortality, with deaths without a mention of COVID on the certificate recording another negative excess being -3%, when compared with the CMI's benchmark of 2019.

1/ Deaths were still a little raised this week in 2019 due to a flu spike, so the last couple of weeks are probably a little flattering to the underlying picture.

Here's the graph including COVID related deaths, with excess deaths in total around 0.5%.

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Latest ONS infection data shows steady increases across all 4 nations in the week ending 14th Feb.

E: +16% to 2.2%
W: +19% to 1.8%
NI: +28% to 1.6%
S: +19% to 2.2%

1/ The recent increase can be seen in the context of previous waves - note levels appear never to go below 1%, but there's a broad pattern of peaks lessening, which hopefully this wave will continue.

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Reasonably strong growth in infection levels in E,W & S in the latest update from ONS, but NI falls back slightly.

E:🔼21% to 1.9%
W:🔼26% to 1.5%
NI:🔽9% to 1.3%
S:🔼17% to 1.8%

Mid point of latest data is Feb 4th.

1/ A clearer view of the drift up in England here, using the ONS daily estimates, which show it topping 2% on the most recent day studied (7th Feb).

Note that the last few days are more difficult to estimate so are sometimes restated materially in subsequent weeks.

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Latest CMI age-standardised analysis shows that excess mortality continues, although the dramatic surge seen in January does appear to have eased off, with a second lower week of around 13%.

1/ Just for clarity, here's the "non-COVID" element of the excess, ie stripping out deaths where COVID was mentioned as a contributory cause on the death cert.

It's clear that this non-COVID element drove the much higher excess levels seen in the first few weeks of the year.

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Latest infection prevalence figures from ONS show little movement in the four countries, with levels relatively low in comparison with the Jan peak.
E: 1.6% (+10%)
W: 1.2% (-6%)
NI: 1.4% (-9%)
S: 1.6% (+8%)

Data is to 31st Jan, so around 10 days behind.

1/ You can see the gentle rise in England's prevalence in late January better here - remember though that modelling the last few days is more difficult, so the data can often be restated in subsequent weeks.

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The latest of the most excellent series of ICU COVID monitoring from @ICNARC has just been published. As usual, it's packed with information, so I'll summarise a few points in the following🧵.

First up, as expected, recent volumes are well down on previous periods.

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https://twitter.com/ICNARC/status/1578431208760885248

But you can see here how overall ICU activity has continued to be above historic levels through the summer, driven by COVID related activity. And is on the increase again even before we get to the autumn.

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A Friday night round up of COVID data, starting with today's ONS infection data, which shows prevalence up 29% in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, flat in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and doubled in NI.

All are currently in the 2.0% to 2.5% range, and remember the NI figure is most volatile due to smaller data samples.

1/ In 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿the modelling suggests a quickening in the rate of growth, up from 24% to 32% in the most recent 7 day periods up to 24th Sep, which is the latest day estimated.

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Another Tuesday brings yet more excess mortality reported, something for the new occupant of No 10 to think about maybe?

This week the age standardised non-COVID excess is the highest in recent weeks at over 12%, according to CMI data.

1/ As @ActuarybyDay notes here, excess mortality in 2022 now stands at over 15,000, despite being at -2,000 at the end of Q1. Quite some turnaround.

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https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1567195069752426496

In the week that certain skeptics questioned whether we are seeing non-COVID excess mortality, a body which has been monitoring mortality for a little longer (around 100 years) confirms that we are.

A thread here from @COVID19actuary, and my thoughts follow:-

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https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary/status/1565028821300125701

You can split recent weeks down into COVID related excess and non-COVID related (the balance of the total). In the latest week, the latter is over 10%, and over the last 9 weeks it is around 6% - a very high figure in "normal times", especially over Summer.

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