Despite the record reported infections in recent days, the latest data from the UKHSA suggests probable Omicron infections in London are already in decline.
The above chart has been created by Professor Anthony Brookes of Leicester University using the total number of probable Omicron infections (S-gene dropout, SGTF) reported each day by the UKHSA, applying a two-day smoothing and then plotting the daily increase as the day’s new reported infections. It gives an estimation of the number of Omicron infections reported for each English region each day. It shows reported Omicron infections in London peaking on December 18th and declining in the five days following it.
It’s worth noting that there was a data anomaly in Thursday’s report in which several thousand reported Omicron infections for London were retrospectively removed, resulting in a negative infection report on that day, which is why the last two days have dropped so low. This should resolve itself over the next few days, but even so there is no sign of continued growth in London.
The U.K. Covid dashboard shows London total reported infections initially peaking by specimen date on December 15th, which fits with a peak of Omicron by report date of December 18th. According to the UKHSA, Omicron infections were 80-90% of the (low-Ct) infections in London at that point.
However, there is then a second peak by specimen date on December 20th – the incomplete data from the last few days does not suggest it will rise much further, though the bumpy course of the outbreak it is hard to predict. With testing up massively in the last few weeks, there is clearly a testing artefact going on here, possibly with people getting tested 10 days before Christmas and then in the immediate run-up to it. The chart below shows PCR test numbers and positivity in London up to December 19th and there is no sign in that of a dip, only a steady rise up to 22.2%. That compares to a winter peak last year of 27.8% on December 31st. While positivity is rising, then, it is not anywhere near as fast or as high as the raw infection data. If the data from the UKHSA Omicron reports is an accurate reflection of what’s happening on the ground we should see the positivity in this chart start to fall shortly.
The following chart shows the national picture for all Pillar 2 tests (not just PCR tests) up to December 23rd. Positivity here has increased modestly to 6.4%, well below last year’s peak of 14% on January 4th (though the introduction of mass LFT testing since then will have changed the parameters somewhat). Deaths continue to decline at present, and are multiple times lower than this time last year, for which increased population immunity can probably take much of the credit (plus possibly milder variants).
Reassuringly, Gauteng province in South Africa – the original Omicron epicentre – continues to show no growth in daily reported infections.
Last year analysis by Imperial College London found that new daily infections in England began to decline from around December 26th. It will be interesting to see if something similar happens this year, perhaps as a post-Christmas herd immunity kicks in following all the mixing in the festive season. Watch this space – and in the meantime, enjoy your Christmas celebrations, and be glad that this year the sceptics won and there was no Christmas lockdown.
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Perhaps you’re on to something, Professor Alexander.
Somehow brings to mind long-ago end-of-term school assemblies, at which our year turned out to be the last Grammar School intake, as the white heat of socialism merged three separate school sites into one comprehensive Jerusalem, built at the stroke of a Labour Education Secretary’s pen.
For around nine terms, the old Boys’ Grammar soldiered on in isolation, as the next yearly intakes were assigned to the old Secondary Mods as part of the first Five-Year Educational Plan.
So for nine terms the old-school Grammar-School Beak continued the old-school, end-of-term tradition of reading from St Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians…
“When I was a child, I thought as a child… As if seeing through a glass darkly… And so abideth these three… Faith, Hope and Charity… But the greatest of these is Charity.”
Followed, if memory serves right, by a rousing chorus of Jerusalem lifting the assembly hall roof off, at a school at which assembled hymn-singing was generally at best patchy.
Meanwhile at home my father was an atheist and my mother a lapsed churchgoer, but the message of doing unto others as you would wish done unto yourself was well-aligned between home and school.
The past is another country, but if nothing else, it lives on inside my head, on occasion permeates how I live, and, for all I know, maybe also on occasion ripples outwards.
I’m not particularly religious despite my farther being a member of the clergy. I suppose I’m comfortable being a cultural Christian.
I’m not religious either. Maybe I am a “cultural Christian” too. I will have to think about what that means. My kneejerk reaction is that it’s a contradiction in terms. You either believe that Christ died for our sins, in which case you’re a Christian, or you don’t, in which case you’re not. But maybe there’s more to it.
Humans do seem to need something, and so do societies and civilisations, to rally around. Race, “blood and soil”, a monarch, a specific set of ideals, a religion of some sort (even wokeism or socialism or climatism or scientism or safetyism).
Jewish people seem quite comfortable with this idea. Most Jewish people I know are secular Jews, as they refer to themselves. But unquestionably Jewish.
Then again they have about 2000 years head start on Christians.
That said, Jewish people are a minuscule proportion of the world population, so it remains questionable as to how much of winning strategy being a secular anything is.
I’d be more impressed if Western Churches were more able to defend themselves against the march through their own institutions. It seems counterintuitive but religions get their strength from the belief of their adherents – and I don’t believe(!) there are enough people who can be convinced to believe any more.
100% agree. My bias – militant Catholic. Church militant and probably born 1000 years late.
Culture is King. When your society worships fake science, does not know a penis from a vagina, believes in UFO’s, non-existing viruses and believes that because a fat face is peering into a small screen it is the apogee of development – it will implode.
Culture is King. This is why nations must exist and persist. No national cultures no freedom. This country was built by, and on, Christianity. Full stop.
I think that unless the English are willing to insist that England is Christian, and that the Church of England is a Christian church, and to make this so, not by force, but by institutional entrenchment and something like financial encouragement…
Christianity does not become a common enterprise by social expediency, but by the conversion of a significant part of the population. Otherwise it is still going to be a mere cultural Christianity, attempted by those who say “I am not a Christian, but I see the value of Christianity…” In other words, it only becomes an “enterprise association” (“εκκλεσια”, “assembly,” or “church” is the word we’re looking for) because it is seen to be true. And if it isn’t seen to be true, then there’s no point in making it our enterprise association, is there?
So the question for everyone is, if Christianity is seen to be so necessary and useful, what is it that stops it being true for “cultural Christians”? Is the refusal to commit to Christ any more than a tired old cultural conditioning by a discredited secularism?
My conclusion: we don’t need “institutional entrenchment” or “financial encouragement,” but revival. Unless Christ died for our sins, and we receive that news gladly, Christianity is nothing.
Good and interesting points. I see the value of Christianity, for sure. But I am not a Christian. Is that a result of “tired old cultural conditioning”? Maybe. I don’t feel conditioned, but I guess most of us are, to a greater or lesser degree. I just cannot get my head around the idea of God and the story of Christ. It’s beyond my ability to process.
Here’s a thought – if Christianity is true you can start anywhere to approach it. I’ve known people who became Christians by years of scientific research, and others who tore a page from a Gideon’s Bible to light a fag in prison.
For example, God is not an idea, but a person. So you could ask him to lead you to truth, and see what happens next.
Or, if evidence is your thing, look at whether today’s scientific knowledge really supports a universe without a governing mind, in the light of cosmic fine-tuning or the waiting-time problem in evolution.
Or after 200 years of destructive biblical criticism, examine whether the New Testament narrative has been debunked, or rather reinforced.
Or if Christianity is so valuable, investigate how it got that way without a rather special origin.
I don’t say all roads lead to Christ, but C. S. Lewis was right to say that, more often than not, it’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but found difficult and not tried.
Your thoughts are much appreciated.
I don’t think science can explain existence. Existence and time and consciousness seem to me to be completely, inherently, intrinsically inexplicable and miraculous to me.
I did read C S Lewis when younger, and found it helpful. Maybe I should revisit him.
Me too. And short on alternative explanations, too. “Chance and an infinite past” makes unwarranted assumptions about the powers of chance, and in any case would necessarily mean we’d never have got to a finite “now.”
“Pan-psychism” is supposed to account for consciousness, without explaining how – and doesn’t explain its existence.
Polytheism’s gods are unexplained products, not creators, of the cosmos – whose universal laws exclude the mythological political conflicts.
And then there’s the fact that everywhere you look it’s just so damned beautiful. It’s as if somebody cares. And that’s before someone shows us John 3:16.
Indeed.
I certainly don’t want or need any kind of explanation – looking for one seems pointless, a waste of time and finding one would be awful (except that I don’t see how one can be found).
I guess I feel a bit like this:
“…Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die…”
Aubade | The Poetry Foundation
Do read the whole poem if you don’t know it. It’s short and easy to read.
I so agree with all your comments, Jon. I especially agree re our world being so beautiful – it all points to our Creator God.
True, though “revival” assumes spiritual life in the first place, which I would not assume. But there is a book which I am told has sold more copies than any other. It needs to be re-read.
Exactly. I value the Professor’s posts highly. I think them amongst the very best things on the site. I look forward to them and am disappointed when there isn’t one. And the posts on the place of Christianity in our world are, I think, amongst his best and most interesting. BUT, in this one, as in all the others, he sidesteps the question of belief. He sidesteps Mr Garvey’s question, ‘Is it true?’ He even sidesteps the easier question, ‘Does it matter whether we think it true or not?’ No one goes to Church to save the State or even Society. No one is or can be religious for the sake of politics. There is and can be no praying ‘Thy will be done’ in order to do mine. And any simulated religion — anything that falls short of actual belief, such belief as, it seems Muslims have — will be found wanting. An England defended by a Christianity maintained by ‘insistence’, ‘institutional entrenchment’ and anything like ‘financial encouragement’ will be as helpless to defend ‘civil association’ as civil association is to defend itself. Mr Garvey and Pilla (a few moments ago) are right: the only recourse is repentance and revival. I say so as someone as incapable of either as, I presume, Professor Alexander is himself.
The problem with a society based on “civilian association” is that it cannot even agree on its values.
This is fundamentally the reason why it is doomed.
Ultimately, it gets to the point where it doesn’t even know how to define a woman.
Sooner or later it tears itself apart. There is no cohesion, only angry focus groups fighting for dominance. Give it three or four generations and it descends into anarchy.
Gordon Bennett, what a bloody fiasco. How predictable was this, though?
”BREAKING: Le Pen and all other defendants have been “sentenced to ineligibility” for democratic elections.
Just like in Romania, the frontrunner in France’s presidential election has been expelled.”
https://x.com/RMXnews/status/1906647772121452827
”Marine Le Pen stands poised to win the 2027 presidential election in France unless the courts disqualify her from running, new polling published just hours before a court hearing to determine her future has shown.
On Sunday, a new Ifop survey for Le Journal du Dimanche showed Le Pen leading in every run-off scenario, making her the undeniable frontrunner and obvious candidate of the right-wing National Rally.
A Parisian court is set to rule Monday on whether Le Pen, accused alongside 26 others in the long-running “parliamentary assistants” case, will be sentenced to a five-year ban from holding public office, with immediate execution even pending appeal.
She is also facing possible prison time and a fine of up to €300,000.”
https://rmx.news/article/le-pen-beats-all-other-presidential-candidates-with-ease-in-final-poll-before-expulsion-court-hearing/
The globalist b’stards obviously saw her as a real threat that needed to be dealt with;
”She was also given a four-year jail sentence, with two years suspended. She is not expected to serve any jail time.
Le Pen, 56, is a three-time presidential contender who had said the next election in 2027 would be her final run for top office.
The ban, which comes into force immediately, ends those hopes unless she successfully appeals before the campaign.”
https://news.sky.com/story/marine-le-pen-barred-from-running-for-office-after-being-found-guilty-in-embezzlement-case-13339142
”For anyone wondering, this was the latest polling for the next French presidential election, published only yesterday.
Le Pen was beating every other candidate at a canter.”
https://x.com/RMXnews/status/1906659324912386097
As in Romania now in France as the World Empire of Fascists moves to keep control. Offhand I can’t name him, but there is young man who is seen as a rising star in RN and could step up in her place and might even benefit from a backlash against the elite in the same way that having a sham conviction to label Donald a ‘felon’ was seen through by the people.
It is rather odd how every political opponent to progressive globalism is turning out to be a nefarious criminal. Thanks goodness we have incorrupt legal institutions to root them out, </sarc>
All well and good but ignores the fact that Christianity failed in Britain long ago. People vote with their feet, and don’t find spiritual sustenance in a set of beliefs based on a book, however inspiring the words may be, and however miraculous things happened 2000 years ago. (and yes, I do believe in the divinity of Jesus, and the miracles)
Singing lovely hymns can give you a lift one day a week, but what about the rest of the time? There is no spiritual METHODOLOGY offered by which one can ascend the spiritual mountain, and truly transform your self from average human to more Christ-like. I’ve seen this time & time again, both durinig my years of Chruch-going and encountering church-goers today: they have very little spiritiual growth, and are just as prone to the negativities of an egocentricc pesonality as the agnostics I rub shoulders with. Some are worse, with their self-righteousness & judgementalism.
No, what the country needs is a source of spiritual nourishment that will enable visible, tangible growth from the egocentric self to a higher state of consciousness, which is why I ended up in a Japanese Zen Buddhist monastery, with spiritual giants as my companions.
The secular enterprise association used to be called the nation usually paired with the nation-state. This combination is possibly even more hated by the collective left than the church as the church could be and has been co-opted. That’s what mass immigration from not only foreign but seriously alien cultures is eventually supposed to deal with.
There are already German politicians running around in Germany who routinely claim that the myth that Germany would be the country of the Germans must finally be overcome, as it’s everybody else’s country but ours. During the recent election campaign, there were posters of the Green party demanding literally Unlimited immigration now!
Yes, I agree. The nation and the nation state could work, and that’s why they are under attack.
James do you not miss the obvious point that civil association is the civilised barrier to avoid the enterprise of civil war. A secular society is an imperative because of this threat so ably illustrated by the leathal disagreement between catholic and protestants at the reformation. The disaster now is that given the so called death of god, some idiots think there is no longer room for a significant difference of opinions. A neutral common wealth and common language has been given up by the internationalists ,who are all one. Ready to squash all difference for the sake of harmony or should that be conformity. It does not need Christianity as such it just needs politicians to one again understand that some of these positions are mutually exclusive including against internationalism, and so a civil secular common ground is required to enable them to get along.
Internationalism is not a common wealth to use individually, it is a common benefit at the behest of an elite.
Therefore it is the common appreciation that our secular society needs defending so as to also defends it’s constituent parts which is the true enterprise.
The early churches in the ancient Roman world were organised in the same way as all the other free associations that honeycombed Roman civic society. The Roman state had no control over any of these, from the craft and trade guilds to the clubs for almost any human social activity.
The Apostle Paul had to remind his converts that in coming to a church they had not come to a dining club or a debating club, as some obviously thought they had.
It was from this beginning that the saeculum had its origin. As Paul famously told his converts, they were not there to involve themselves in what today would be called politics.
Yet in the very same breath Paul created the concept of political legitimacy. The ruler – the government – was supposed to be a ‘terror’ to wrongdoers, Paul observed. That was the reason he gave as to why the government should be obeyed. But the unspoken implication in what he said is this: what if the government isn’t a terror to wrongdoers? Where then is its legitimacy?
There is nothing in Paul or any of the other evangelists to indicate that they thought that the purpose of Christianity was, as C S Lewis put it, to act as a ‘short cut to the chemist’s shop’. The faith as a means and the world an end. But by the beginning of the 20th century, the man who was the Bishop of Durham at the time was observing that much of the religion as preached in the churches had largely become social democracy; an extra impetus to social improvement.
Thought-provoking article with which I partially agree, being a strongly believing Christian (trying to follow Jesus Christ). I have paid up a one-off donation simply in order to comment!! I used to subscribe (for a few years) but have cut down dramatically on my extra-curricular giving for very valid and good reasons (money needed elsewhere, not for yours truly). I am interested in James Alexander as we used to know another professor at Bilkent university, who we presume is still there.
In this case, I agree with Jon Garvey’s comment below: it’s no good reverting to being a culturally Christian nation, repentance followed by revival is needed. Revival follows true repentance (seeing ourselves as sinners in need of a saviour). I continue to pray that God sends repentance on this nation.
Without Christianity there is either no standard or another standard to determine what is right or wrong.
If Christianity is thrown away then the concept of right and wrong, by Western standards, is also thrown away.
Without that moral standard then one cannot say that, for example, theft is wrong because maybe according to the moral standard of someone else stealing is ok.
Without a moral standard we cannot say our moral standard is better than someone else’s moral standard.
Also in Christianity we have the concept that everyone is created in the image of God and we are equal.
Without Christianity that idea of equality is thrown away.
Christians could say that slavery was wrong because it did not treat people equally.
Notice that Christians were the ones who started to do away with slavery.
The concept of equality is not in many other religions/ideologies so slavery was not against their moral code.
But, again, you can’t have Christianity for the sake of morality or equality. You can only have it for its own sake. If you try to have it for the sake of something else, what you will have is (at best) the something else, not it. I am not sure where he says it, but T S Eliot somwhere says something like ‘what we can’t have we must do without’. And that, it seems to me, is the truth of it. If you don’t believe Christ is the way, the truth and the life, you must do without Christianity.