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Will the vaccine bring back normal life? GDP and Fishing
00:28:53
If we vaccinate the top four priority groups by February, how much will things change?
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BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts.
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Hello, and welcome to More Or Less, the programme that never says next slide, please, until it's had a jolly good look at the numbers on the first slide. I'm Tim Harford. This week, the vaccine rollout continues. How long will it take before we see the benefits? And what benefits will we see? The data suggest that the UK's economy performed worse than almost anywhere during the lockdowns and. But are the numbers misleading us? And sugar and tea and rum. Also fish. But first, on last week's show, we painted a pretty grim picture of the situation the UK was facing. Now, there may be signs that things are turning a corner. My producer Kate Lamble is with me. Hello, Kate.
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A
Hi, Tim. Yeah, cases certainly seem to be falling. I like to look at seven day averages because reported daily case numbers jump about a lot. And on the 1st of January, the seven day average number of daily positive samples was just over 61,000. On the 11th of January it was just under 45,000.
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B
Well, that's good news, but we know there are some limitations on the number of cases we discover in the community. So are other numbers giving us a similar picture?
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A
Well, the trend has always been cases fall first, then admissions, then deaths. Hospital admissions may have peaked, but it's too early to be sure and they really need to start falling because they're still at a level which is around two to three times as high as a month ago. It's not clear that deaths have peaked. The worst recent day was 11 January, when 1064 people died within 28 days of a positive COVID test. That's getting closer to the first wave peak.
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B
Ok, good news on cases, grim news on deaths, but we would expect that if cases are falling, then eventually deaths will fall too. And there's another source of hope the vaccine. Now, last week we noted that the government was on course to vaccinate the top four priority groups, which include everyone aged 70 or over, only by July. So if they wanted to hit their target of doing so by mid February, they were going to have to hurry up.
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A
There is more good news here. They have hurried up. The UK had been averaging fewer than 500,000 first doses of a vaccine each week. But at the end of last week, we exceeded 300,000 doses a day for two days. Last week I also said we needed to be averaging, giving two and a half million first doses a week to meet the Government's target. By the middle of February this week, we managed around 1.8 million, which is not quite there. But not far off. If the pace keeps accelerating, we will hit that target. However, I should say we shouldn't just be paying attention to how many doses we've given out, but also who is being vaccinated and where. The rate does vary from place to place. The most Recent data from NHS England that was broken down by age suggests that 46% of over 80s in the Northeast had had the first dose of a vaccine, while in the east of England that figure was only 29%. Now, that data is nearly two weeks old now, but it does indicate that the rollout has been proceeding differently in different places. Scotland also appears to be vaccinating people more slowly, but by 11 January only around 7% of those over 80 in Scotland had been vaccinated. However, this seems to be part of a deliberate strategy focusing on care homes first before the vaccine is rolled out into the community. Care home residents are the most at risk, but they're also harder to reach.
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B
Thank you, Kate. Last December, the government announced the priorities for vaccination. First, care home residents and staff. Second, people aged 80 or over and frontline health and social care workers. Third, people aged between 75 and 79 and fourth, the rest of the septuagenarians and people who are otherwise clinically extremely vulnerable. These four groups account for 88% of COVID deaths so far. So we know that the vaccination policy should bring down deaths rapidly. But deaths aren't the whole story. We asked our favourite actuary, Stuart McDonald, to run the numbers and try to calculate when the vaccination program will relieve the extreme pressure on the nhs. What impact would the vaccine have on hospitalisations relative to the scenario with no vaccine? And when might we be able to return to something approaching normality?
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C
Well, we had to make a few assumptions. First, we assumed that the vaccine would be 70% effective at preventing any illness, but fully effective at preventing death or illness serious enough to require hospitalisation. We also had to make an assumption about take up and we assumed very good take up amongst the priority groups. And with the vaccine programme going well, we assumed that the government target for vaccines will be hit.
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B
Those are the assumptions. Where do they take us?
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C
The vaccines ought to lead to around a 60% reduction in in hospital admissions by mid March.
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B
Okay.
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Importantly though, intensive care admissions see a much smaller benefit as the age distribution in intensive care is much younger surprises people often Only a quarter of ICU admissions are aged 70 plus and a similar number are aged 52 or younger.
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B
That is surprising. I mean, do we know why that
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C
Is to some extent that's about the way ICU is triaged to ensure that it's only the individuals most likely to benefit that are admitted. So we only expect to see intensive care admissions reduced by about a third by mid March.
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B
That matters because the massive pressure on ICU capacity is a large part of what's putting pressure on the NHS in general, isn't it?
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C
Yes, I absolutely agree. Intensive care admissions are one of the key pinch points, as I understand it, in the system. So the fact that those are the last two fall is a, a reason that we'll likely need to leave restrictions in place for some time after the deaths start to fall. We did also extend the results out to look at the next priority groups, so people aged 65 to 70 or below age 65 with underlying health conditions. As we're moving down those vaccine priority groups, we're obviously less confident in assuming a very high take up rate. But if we did have full vaccine take up, we'd now be preventing around three quarters of hospital admissions and over half of intensive intensive care admissions.
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B
Let's just think ourselves into Valentine's Day, middle of February, by assumption, all of the groups over the age of 70 have been vaccinated at that point. What would happen if we just let the virus rip? Would it be okay or would there still be problems?
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C
Based on the modelling that I've done, I have some considerable concern about that. I think there's still great potential in for a very significant number of hospital admissions and intensive care admissions. Even with the benefit that the vaccine gives, the increase in the R number that would likely arise given low levels of immunity feels like it would still have the potential to overwhelm the benefit that we're seeing from the vaccine.
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Stuart MacDonald from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. Stuart looked at deaths and hospital admissions. But to stop the pandemic in its tracks, we need to stop the virus spreading. So would vaccinating people stop them transmitting the virus or would it just stop them from getting ill even as they unknowingly infect others? Deborah Dunwalters is a Professor of Immunology at the University of Surrey and she chairs the COVID 19 task force for the British Society of Immunology. Naturally, we tend to assume that if someone's vaccinated, not only will they not get sick, but they also won't be a vector for transmission. But do we know that's true?
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No, we don't know that's true. In fact, there is evidence that it's possible to be protected from disease, but still to actually get the virus. We knew that was possible before from the phenomenon of asymptomatic infection, where people could be carrying the disease but not show any symptoms. So you can't assume that if you've had the vaccine that you're 100% protected from being able to pass the virus on.
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The Phase 3 clinical trial of the Pfizer vaccine didn't examine whether vaccinated people could still catch the virus and so potentially pass it on. But AstraZeneca did examine this question in their phase three trial, and what they
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found was that in the vaccinated group, there was protection from getting the virus. In other words, turning up a positive test with the swab. So there were perhaps 100 people who swabbed positive in the vaccine group still. But compared to the control group, which had 190 people, that was an improvement. So there's about 46% protection from getting the virus on top of the fact that you've got protection from getting severe disease.
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And so this big question of what happens if we vaccinate the top four groups, do we have any idea what difference that is actually going to make
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to case numbers at this point in time? I think we are still waiting for some more data. I do think that it will have an impact on case numbers, but it's very important that at this point, while we don't know, we keep our distancing and we keep up with all the measures. I know it's miserable for people, but until we can be sure how much protection we'll get from the vaccine in terms of transmission, we need both. We need the vaccine and we also need the current measures that we're taking.
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Professor Deborah Dunn Walters of the University of Surrey. And a reminder that on BBC sounds or Radio 4 at 11:30 on Monday mornings, you can listen to my series How To Vaccinate the World. Meanwhile, you're listening to More or Less, and our email is more or lessbc.co.uk. there's no doubt that the pandemic has caused an economic crisis as well as a public health crisis. Whole sectors of the economy have been shut down. Many millions of people have lost jobs, income or both. The most straightforward way to measure an economic hit is by looking at gdp, Gross Domestic Product. You can measure GDP by adding up everyone's income or everyone's spending, or the market value of everything that's been produced. In principle, all three methods produce the same number. In a typical recession, GDP falls by a percentage point or three. But during the height of the first lockdown, the second quarter of last year, GDP in the UK dropped by about 20%. Economic catastrophe and worse in the UK than pretty much anywhere else. Simon Briscoe is the director of the data science company, the Data Analysis Bureau.
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Firstly, it can be put down to genuine economic response. Britain has a disproportionately large service sector, so arts, cultures, entertaining, sandwiches, pubs, the whole lot went into lockdown so money couldn't be spent. And secondly, there was a particularly large hit from the fall in what is called government output, primarily schools and hospitals.
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B
But hang on. Remember that GDP is supposed to be a measure of the market value of what's produced. Most schools and hospitals provide free services paid for out of taxes, so that makes calculating their market value, and thus gdp, rather tricky. And here the plot thickens. You mentioned schools were closed, a lot of hospital operations were stopped. So how does that feed into UK GDP figures?
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E
Well, the output of the government sector in the year to the second quarter of last year fell by 23% in the UK. Now there was only France and I think Hungary, that fell by more than 10%. Some, like Spain, which also had a terrible health consequence from COVID had no fall at all in their government output.
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B
Does that reflect something real about the world or does that reflect something about the way we're counting?
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As far as I'm concerned, this is how we're counting. What we have seen in recent years is that the UK has tried to adopt best statistical practice by trying to measure the outputs of the health and education sector. So in the old days, and it's still true in many other countries, the output of the education sector is essentially counted as the wages of teachers. Now, of course, during the pandemic, the wages of teachers were unaffected, regardless of whether they did more work, the same work or less work. In the uk, the Office for National Statistics has been developing new surveys to actually look at the amount of teaching. So in the uk, where schools were closed and where less teaching happened, there was a decline in the output measured. So I think what I believe is that the UK figures is simply not comparable with the equivalent figures from Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain and so forth, because the methodology is different.
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B
The methodology is different for hospitals too, where there's a similar story to tell. Simon Briscoe says the UK noted in its GDP figures that accident and emergency visits reduced and things such as fewer hip and cancer operations took place at the height of the pandemic, whereas the
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vast majority of the other countries have simply put in GDP the salaries of Their staff, in essence, they've been ignoring in their GDP that there is less output from their health services, whereas the UK has admitted and accepted that the output has fallen. So, actually, I think the UK figures are of better quality. They're more meaningful, they're more accurate, but they're not comparable with those same figures from other countries.
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B
Do you know what the headline numbers would be if the UK was using something more similar to the standards used elsewhere in Europe?
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In the second quarter of 2020, the fall in GDP in the UK over the year was about 20%. The impact of the differential measurement of education and health is worth about 6 percentage points. So our fall in GDP in the second quarter of last year, had we adopted the Spanish style of doing this, which is probably the extreme, would have been 14% fall, not a 20% fall. If we'd adopted a Dutch or Belgian style, it would have been a 16% fall, not a 20% fall. So, you know, I'm not in any way trying to pretend that there isn't a fundamental economic crisis or that lives happening seriously disrupted by all of this, but a fall of 14% would have put us in the same ballpark as France, Italy, Spain, not far off Germany either. We'd have been on a par with our neighbours, whereas instead, we're way off the bottom of the league table.
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B
Although again, it is worth underlining, we think the 20% is probably closer to being correct. It's just that everyone else should probably have been down there with us.
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E
I think you're right, you know, the vast majority of other European countries should be displaying a much larger fall in gdp.
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B
Simon Briscoe of the Data Analysis Bureau. You're listening to More or less on BBC Radio 4 with me, Tim Harford. In June last year, a claim started circulating on Twitter. In the UK, suicide figures are up 200% since lockdown.
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F
Could two friends please copy and repost this tweet?
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B
We're trying to demonstrate that someone is always listening and people did copy and repost it over 42,000 times in 10 hours. Since then, the claim has kept resurfacing on social media, but to find out if there was any truth behind it, I spoke to Professor Nav Kapoor. He works at the University of Manchester collecting and analyzing data on suicide and self harm for the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Self Harm. As he explains, measuring suicide rates can be a complicated task.
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G
One of the difficulties with statistics on suicide is that generally when a suicide death tragically occurs, that needs investigating by a coroner and then that gets fed through to the Office of National Statistics. So typically there's a 6 to 12 month lag. So we don't have official data on suicide.
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B
So we're saying that we wouldn't have figures on suicide that were even mostly complete until a year after the events occurred.
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G
Obviously, in a situation like the pandemic, we have to think about other ways of doing this. And one of the other ways we can look at this is by using something called real time surveillance, where actually people will go directly to the coroners or to local police and to get information on possible suicide deaths, more or less kind of in real time. And that's one of the things that we did in collaboration with six areas of the country.
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B
These six areas cover a population of 9 million people and have a good geographical spread. It is worth noting though, that the coverage isn't comprehensive and the data only go as far as August of 2020. With that in mind, what did Nav's study show?
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Well, the estimate tells us there wasn't an increase. So when we compare the period January to March 2020 with the period April to August 2020, the number of suicide deaths in those areas was roughly the same. So pre lockdown it was 84, post lockdown it was 85. And it's really important when we're talking about suicide statistics that we remember that, you know, behind every number there's an individual with a family, family. So each death is an individual tragedy. But we didn't see an increase post lockdown compared with pre lockdown.
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B
What about comparing April to August 2020 with April to August 2019? Does that give you a different picture?
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G
We did that as well. And there the figures for this year were a little bit higher. They were about 7% higher. We didn't make that the main focus of our analysis for two reasons, really. This data collection is in many ways kind of experimental. So you might expect a kind of slight year on year increase because people are getting better at collecting the data. And the other reason is the fact that suicide rates in general did rise in 2018 and 2019. So any change between the years here could reflect a kind of background increase in rates that has nothing to do with the pandemic.
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B
And can we learn anything from looking at information about other forms of self harm or mental distress or all these other indicators? Do they tell us anything about the mental health of the population or about the risks of suicide going forward?
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G
One of the striking things about self harm and people who've hurt themselves presenting to services is self harm presentations decreased hugely so people were less likely to come to hospital having hurt themselves, they were less likely to go to their general practitioners. That was something like a 40% decrease in self harm presenting to services. Mental distress. We know from studies people's levels of clinically significant mental distress have increased by about 10% in the early part of the pandemic.
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B
And what you've told me suggests a little bit of a puzzle. We've got a context of rising mental distress and yet we've got no indication that suicide is rising, thankfully. Do you find it difficult to square those two facts or is there a simple explanation?
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G
I think the first thing to say is that, you know, it is quite early in terms of the suicide data that are available and sometimes there's a lag and sometimes some of the effects of the pandemic, such as economic effects, are yet to play out. But the other thing is there may be a genuine kind of social cohesion effect at the time of external crises. So we see this when we look at data for suicide rates. Around the time of the two world wars, suicide rates decreased. And there's this idea that societies kind of pull together when there's an external threat.
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B
Professor Nav Kapoor of the University of Manchester. If you're feeling emotionally distressed and would like details of organisations which offer advice and support, go online to BBC.co.uk actionline or you can call free at any time to hear recorded information on 0800-066-6066. Last week, back on Radio 4's Any Questions? The Conservative MP for Portsmouth North, Penny Mordaunt, was discussing the benefits of Brexit when she mentioned this.
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UK quotas for fish are going to increase 2/3 over the next five years.
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B
One of our loyal listeners, Gordon Robinson, wrote to more or less@BBC.co.uk it all sounded fishy to him. I haven't heard this figure quoted anywhere else. Is that really what the agreement says? Gordon, you have come to the right place. Jordan Dunbar is our fishing correspondent. Hello, Jordan.
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H
Hiya, Tim. My official title is now actually Fishing and Sea Shanties Correspondent because sea shanties have gotten very big on social media, so it seems sensible for them to just throw it all in in my patch, given my detailed knowledge of all things nautical.
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B
Well, if you say so, Jordan. About these fishing figures.
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H
Well, every coastal country is surrounded by a so called exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, which gives them the right to fish up to 200 nautical miles from the coast or to a maritime halfway point between them and neighbouring countries. Now the UK has left the eu. The country has its own EEZ once again, and it's quite big because we have a lot of coast. And as part of the trade negotiations last year, the EU agreed to hand over some of their fishing rights in this area. Over the next five years, the EU will transfer to the UK a quarter of their fishing rights in UK waters. That quarter is broken down into different amounts of many different species in many different areas. But we'll just take the headline figure and we'll look at the cash value of fish rather than, say, tonnage, because presumably that is what these negotiations are about.
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B
So the EU's handing over a quarter of its rights in UK waters. Penny Mordaunt said that UK quotas would increase by two thirds. So do those two numbers add up?
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H
No, they don't. Not even close. Looking at the most recent data, the UK had half the fishing rights in UK waters, so that's over £800 million worth. And the rest of the EU had about a third, which is a bit under 600 million pounds. You can only get the UK's quota increasing by two thirds, as Penny Mordaunt claims, if the EU handed over all their rights, which isn't what was agreed.
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B
So if the UK gains a quarter of the EU share, that's a quarter of a third, which is. Gosh, I'm having GCSE maths flashbacks. Jordan.
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H
Don't worry, Tim, I've got my calculator whipped out here. It means the UK share of the quota in UK waters rises from 50% to 58.3%. Or to put it another way, the UK share has increased by nearly 8.3 percentage points, which is nowhere close to the increase of two thirds that Penny Mordaunt claimed. That would be a 33 percentage point increase, taking us from 50 to 83%.
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B
Right, so she cod do better with the numbers.
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H
Very good.
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B
But it's not just penny Mordaunt. On 28 December, her colleague Michael Gove put another fishy claim in writing in the Scotsman, where, at present, British fishermen are entitled to around half the fish in our waters. In 2026, they will be taking two
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F
thirds of our marine wealth.
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B
So, to be clear, this is a different two thirds here, but it's still wrong, I think, because Mr. Gove's two thirds equates to around 67% of fishing rights, and he's saying then that we'll see an increase of 17 percentage points. And in fact, as you've just explained, Jordan, the increase is half that. He's as slippery as an eel? Is he floundering?
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H
He is, Tim. His pre Brexit figure for UK quotas looks small because he's including Norway and the Faroe Islands and they have substantial fishing rights here, just as we have fishing rights there. But then his post Brexit figure ignores Norway and the Faroe Islands, which makes the UK share look bigger. That's not how the numbers go, Tim. Neither his claim nor Penny Mordaunt's is true.
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B
What are you doing, Jordan?
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H
I told you, Tim. I'm the sea Shanty correspondent. Just grab yourself a wee totter rum. Let's heave hold of the rhythm here. There once was a woman like many
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MPs, thought she understood our fisheries. Her name was Penny and figures in hand she went on the radio that's not how numbers go. A fraction of a fraction is less, you know. By two thirds she said our nets would grow but more or less say no. Half the fish were ours to begin. Then a quarter of the east third go in the maths might have left you in a spin but the gain is 8.3. That's not how numbers go. A fraction of a fraction is less, you know. Sun did high night, sun did low. Not onto Michael Gove. Gove, he said, we'll get two thirds of the fishes in our water or so I've heard. But go, he missed a simple sum and nigh our tail is done. That's not how numbers go. A fraction of a fraction is less, you know. If you're counting Hatta Gert over soul, don't ask Michael Gove.
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B
Jordan. That was a lot better than I thought it would be. You must have had some help.
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E
Yes, a lot.
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H
The lyrics were by Kate Lamble to a traditional tune arranged by the brilliant Frida d' Souza and mixed by James Beard. The singers were David Denyer, Sophie d', Souza Williams, Will Ashcroft and on bass, Moose.
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B
I did ask my editor if I was allowed to sing along, but more
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I
or less, they know,
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B
and that is more than enough for now. We will be back next week and until then, goodbye. More or Less was produced by Kate Lamble with Nathan Gower, Chloe Hajimothayou and Charlotte MacDonald. The programme was mixed by James Beard. Our editor is Richard Varden and I'm Tim Harford.
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F
Hello. I hope you've enjoyed the podcast you've just heard. There's another podcast available as well. It's called the Infinite Monkey Cage, with me, Robin Ince and me, Brian Cox.
- [28:16]
B
And it's going to be, I think, more educational than whatever it is that you just listened to, because we're going to consider subjects such as the nature of reality, which encompasses whatever it is that you just listened to.
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F
So, yeah. Jan11, Eric Idle, Frank Wilczek, Sarah Pascoe, Ross Noble, Chris Jackson, Alan Davis, David Dill. There's a huge number of people talking about many big ideas. There won't be that many equations. There might be one equation, won't there, Brian? There will.
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B
And also Erica McAllister, lady of the Flies. Very 2021.
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F
And you can hear the infinite monkey cage on BBC Sounds.
- [28:44]
B
Yeah, there's hundreds of them, actually.
- [28:45]
F
Hundreds. Loads of them. Who'd have thought you could do over 100 episodes about everything that's in the universe? It's a lot more than I first imagined.
- [28:52]
G
Why?
- [28:52]
B
You're a comedian, not a scientist.