Do you have the link to where these figures come from? I'd like to work out exactly what they mean.
Ta.
Showing public health data across England
coronavirus.data.gov.uk
They are just using the government's own website above.
What they illustrate is that the areas hardest hit at the outset of Covid-19 gained natural immunity from their high levels of infections. Although suffering very high levels of death in that first early 2020 phase, the immunity gained resulted in far lower death rates in later phases such as the Alpha (Kent) and Delta variant surges. The end result is that those hardest hit areas haven't suffered any more deaths than the country at large.
To expand on this:
London was the first to have Covid, two infected Chinese people on 29th January 2020, so with no protection, social distancing or guidance that early it spread like wildfire. Once Covid became established more widely London was reported as having 2.5 times the infection rate of the rest of the country, with boroughs like my own Croydon one and the adjacent Lambeth at around four times. Hence them being sampled.
Of course with London having the highest population density in the country by far, being the first to get the infection and therefore having it the longest, plus by far the lowest vaccination rates and an extremely high black population who are much more vulnerable to Covid , London should logically have the greatest number of deaths by a huge margin. But it hasn't suffered any more than elsewhere over the whole two years.
The reason for that as I've been arguing all along is that initial very widespread gain of natural immunity. Fortunately I now have the support of the government's chief statistician, Professor David Spiegelhalter who has belatedly reached the same conclusion, saying that the natural immunity from that early Covid infection is at least as effective as that from the vaccines and may be more so. He's looking at the whole country of course, but from my extrapolated London data I believe it's definitely a little more effective than the vaccines.
However, since the vaccines are also effective in avoiding the worst that Covid can do to one, it's best for all concerned to have both the vaccines and any gained natural immunity to ensure the best outcome.
My interest in that post was to record the stable present base from which I'll be able to judge how effective or not our natural immunity is against Omicron as it invades.
Stepping away now from that subject, I turn to the uselessness of testing since the results are worthless. It's blindingly obvious everywhere from the government's own data that the higher the acceptance of vaccines, the higher the infection rates. For example:
UK 81% have had both vaccines, infection rate per 100k is 488.
Lambeth only 59% with both vaccines, infection rate 272.
Not because the vaccines don't work, simply because those who don't bother to get the vaccines don't bother to get tested so far fewer infections can get detected.
Widely analysing that ratio of vaccinations to infection rates leads me to the conclusion that the infection rate is very similar everywhere in the country, now that Covid is everywhere.
.
www.express.co.uk
