The latest Technical Briefing on the variants of concern, number 22, has been published by Public Health England (PHE), so we can update our (unadjusted) estimates of vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant using the data it includes from sequenced Delta samples from positive PCR test results in England.
As before, we subtract the figures in briefing 22 from those in briefing 17 to give the figures for the period June 22nd to August 29th. We also use figures for proportions of the population vaccinated by age derived from the PHE Covid surveillance reports.
Starting with the over-50s, for the period June 22nd to August 29th, PHE reports 47,874 Delta infections in the double vaccinated and 5,748 in the unvaccinated. PHE figures show that in this period the proportion of the over-50s double vaccinated increased from 87% to 89%, giving a mean of 88%, and the proportion unvaccinated was stable at 9% (Note: not 10% as I stated previously). Calculating the vaccine effectiveness against Delta infection in the over-50s (1-(47,874/88%)/(5,748/9%)) gives a figure of 15%. This is the same as the figure I calculated two weeks ago, though now using the more accurate figure of 9% rather than 10% for the proportion unvaccinated. This means that it represents a decline (using 9% for the previous calculation would give a VE of 24%). This continues to be very different to the estimate in the recent Oxford University study using ONS survey data, a study which I criticised for numerous inconsistent and implausible findings.
With regard to deaths with Covid (within 28 days of a positive test), PHE reports 1,004 in the double vaccinated and 399 in the unvaccinated in the over-50s in this period. This works out (1-(1,004/88%)/(399/9%)) at a vaccine effectiveness against death of 74%, down slightly from 75% using data from the previous briefing (even with the change to 9% unvaccinated). This is a 74% reduction in mortality including any reduced risk of infection, not in addition to it. It continues to be an encouraging figure, albeit lower than earlier studies have suggested, and dropping week on week.
For the under-50s, for the period June 22nd to August 29th, PHE reports 58,714 Delta infections in the double vaccinated and 160,143 in the unvaccinated. PHE figures show that in this period the proportion of under-50s double vaccinated increased from 18% to 39%, giving a mean of 28%, and the proportion unvaccinated decreased from 61% to 51%, giving a mean of 56%. Calculating the vaccine effectiveness against Delta infection in the under-50s (1-(58,714/28%)/(160,143/56%)) gives a figure of 27%. This is down from 37% two weeks ago, and though higher than in the over-50s, is still very low and much lower than earlier studies (including the trial) indicated.
For deaths, PHE reports 37 in the double vaccinated and 93 in the unvaccinated in the under-50s in this period. This works out (1-(37/28%)/(93/56%)) at a vaccine effectiveness against death of 20%. This is up from 12% two weeks ago, but is still very low and much lower than in the over-50s. This may be because higher risk people are prioritised for vaccination, or are more likely to consent to it, in the younger age groups.
These figures are much lower than those commonly quoted and used in modelling, and if they are closer to the truth then they mean the official, self-congratulatory estimates of “100,000 deaths” and “24.4 million infections” prevented by the vaccines are huge overestimates.
By plotting the differences between the reported total Delta cases in the last four briefings we can also get a picture of how they are changing over time in the different age and vaccine-status cohorts. The red and yellow lines in the chart below show that new Delta infections in the unvaccinated have started to increase again, but not by as much as those in the vaccinated (for this purpose, all who are at least 21 days after their first dose), which have continued to surge. A majority of new infections (57,565 out of 94,148, or 61%) are now in the vaccinated. This means that the recent increase in reported infections in England is being driven primarily by infections in the vaccinated. The fainter lines show the trends in the over- and under-50s, indicating that in both age cohorts new Delta infections in the vaccinated now outnumber those in the unvaccinated, and that new infections in the vaccinated over-50s are increasing particularly fast. This helps to explain the declining vaccine effectiveness estimates given above.
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550 mile range in my diesel Audi.
5 mins to fill it.
Heater on, fast as a like.
Plants get free CO2 to eat too.
Plus 12 year black kid in the Congo didn’t have to go down a mine to get the stuff that makes the silly EV work
850 on a tankful in my Renault Trafic. Heater or a/c full on
450+ in my little Hyundai i10 .. with heater, lights and radio on. £30 pa road tax; cheap to insure.
EVs are simply not a practical idea for long-distance driving. But perhaps that’s the whole point. They want us either not to travel far, or to use public transport and ditch private vehicles altogether. Remember the old prediction that people will own nothing, and be happy.
And the most galling thing is that all this inconvenience isn’t going to have the slightest beneficial effect on the climate.
Just like the attacks on Farmers harvest (pun intended) very little. This seems to be part of the Agenda 2030 push to Build Back better.
Or ‘Extract Money Faster’
“EVs are simply not a practical idea..”
You could have stopped there. If they were we would have been driving them for decades instead of ICEVs.
And you wouldn’t need to subsidise them with taxpayers cash or use taxpayers money to provide charging points.
Recall of MPs Act 2015:https://notonthebeeb.co.uk/so/c8PDZE4U1?languageTag=en&cid=426765f9-8b6f-43e7-9ca1-b318db924f5c
£1.12 per kWh is a rip off, if you convert the thermal content of petrol at roughly 9 kWh per litre & guesstimate the efficiency of your engine at around 30%. It’s like paying out £3.50 a litre.
Incidentally, at todays prices my petrol car averages about 9p per mille, with most fuel being bought from ASDA – and a lot of the total is longish M road trips.
The whole “Green Energy” thing is a rip-off. Pay more and get less. (If it’s available, that is. And with unreliables such as wind and solar, that’s not guaranteed.)
The huge question is will TPTB allow us to continue to nurse our ICE cars for as long as we can manage? Or will there be a huge bunch of taxes, ULEZ schemes and restrictions on spare parts so as to ‘drive’ us off the road?
If we are allowed to keep them going? I think there will be a big industry in keeping old ICE cars on the road. But if they force the issue and make it EVs or nothing then it is a dismal outlook. I suspect that new technologies will come along for transportation but the current generation of EVs will spell the end of happy family leisure motoring. At best us hoi-polloi may have a cheap low range Chinese EV for local utility travel.
I’m sure the easiest thing for TPTB would be to target fuel supplies. If they can find a way to stop us getting supplies of petrol and diesel, then it’s basically game over for the ICE vehicle.
And there was me thinking the Government are there to facilitate the will of the electorate!
Oh no, it’s there to shape the nation according to its own will. But first it has to hoodwink enough of the electorate into thinking that they both have the same interests.
What a quaint notion!
Let’s face it – if you remove personal transport then the leisure industry is dead. Unemployment, no tax income follows. Think of all the places that are not reachable by public transport. Think of all those who support motor vehicles who will now be unemployed. The hit to the government finances would make Rachel from Account’s imaginary black hole real by many times more.
Mileage with the heating off is not the proper mileage though. It is like saying my plate of steak and chips will fill me up but only if I eat 3 Kitkats first.
The British writer Patrick Hamiltion wrote about the horror of the motorcar. He is almost completely forgotten these days but his novels are well worth reading. Hangover Square, The Slaves of Solitude. He lives on though in one sense and that is through a play he wrote called Gas Light. There was a good Ingrid Bergman film of it. This term has found its way into modern political discourse, gaslighting, although its meaning has been distorted slightly.
One thing I like about the Brits, the common people, is that they never get all enthusiastic about a new technology like the Yanks do. They might adpot it eventually, usually out of laziness and vacantness but there isn’t any expectation that all of this crap could ever make life better. Although I have read horrible stories in educational supplements about how teachers are applauding the fact that every child in their class has an electronic tablet. Basically a zombie machine and you hear that parent give phones to children as young as ten. This is horrific just slightly less horrific than the demoniac smiles of the Yanks selling this crap.
The number of mobile phones per capita far outreached that in the USA in the 1990s.
The cost per unit of electricity obviously varies depending on which type of tariff you’re on but is at least 40p/kwh so charging the author’s Ford at home would work out as about the same cost per mile as his Honda Civic. Therefore it would be impossible to recoup the massive extra cost of the Ford. Proof that EVs are only for the well off.
It would be interesting to compare the cost per mile of an EV versus a petrol or diesel for urban driving and see if the costs work out about the same as motorway driving. Driving at speed means far more air resistance hence higher energy use per mile but urban driving is often stop start. Accelerating uses far more energy than driving at a constant speed and a lot of this energy is lost when braking so driving in traffic may result in roughly the same energy use per mile as motorway driving.
The nail in the coffin is the cost of battery replacement.
It astounds me that anyone chooses to buy an EV – apart from company car drivers who have to get one and gain some tax advantages.
“if you regularly cover high mileage in an EV, you need to travel when everyone else isn’t to avoid queuing at chargers.”
Au contraire, I see all the BEVVERS travelling in groups. It’s so they have fellow BEVVERS to socialise with while they wait together for two hours to charge their BEVs not too quickly to avoid damaging the batteries. They also get to share enlightening, heartwarming stories about how well they are saving the planet. And they MUST be friends, because fighting over chargers isn’t a very planet friendly look. Too much CO2 is emitted when you fight.
A bevvy of electric car drivers.
“Every cloud has a silver lining though. Your correspondent predicts an impending boomtime for old style garages and the market in spare parts for petrol cars for years to come.”
The Government will simply outlaw cars over a certain age, 12 years perhaps, and maybe make it illegal to sell spares apart from brake pads – all with no reference to Parliament of course.
Drugs are illegal but people get very rich selling them without too much problem.
”To eke out the range I travel everywhere with the heater off, which currently demands a substantial coat, hat and gloves.”
Yes prior to the 1970s cars required that, and many afterwards too for a number of years.
I do so love technological progress.
James May a few years back showed that the range of battery cars had barely increased since the 1890s. Yes, they are more comfortable. Yes, they go much faster….for a short while.
That’s the funniest bit for me – EV’s are not new tech. Sure lithium ion cells and 0-60 times in a few seconds is newish (and pointless day to day), however the electric BEV is over 100 years old… and we ditched them for petrol and diesel powered vehicles… until governments started bribing people with subsidies and tax breaks to start buying them again