Why We Need to Vaccinate Children
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The U.K. is telling us how important it is.
How the U.K. and U.S. Compare
The U.S. appears to be coming out of the delta surge. And the U.K. was hit sooner. (note, most of these statistics are coming from Worldometers.info)
But in the U.K., instead of infections continuing to decline, they are plateauing at a completely unacceptable rate of between 35 and 40k a day…in a country with a population of 67.22 million. The 7 day moving average has been oscillating. It’s currently 37, 951 and trending up, but the last time it hit that point, it dropped again.
In the U.S. we currently have a 7 day moving average of 88,590, although this is a little low because of reporting delays from the “holiday.” (Don’t get me started, okay). Before that, we had a 7 day moving average of about 100,000 and trending down. Our population is 329.5 million.
So, the U.K. has about 20% of the population of the U.S. For them to be doing as well as us, their rate would have to be at 20,000 and trending down…a bit more than half of what it is.
In other words, right now, we are doing almost twice as well controlling COVID as the U.K. even though their vaccine rate by population is slightly higher…67.3 percent as opposed to 65.5 by total population at time of writing.
What gives?
Let’s look at another part of the picture. Deaths.
The 7 day average of COVID deaths in the U.K. is currently 113. In the U.S. it is 1423. For us to be doing the same on deaths, they would have to have a moving average of 284.
Okay, so we are doing about twice as well on preventing spread…and between half and a third as well at preventing deaths.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that the spread in the U.K. is probably amongst a population less likely to die. They’re doing a bit better at protecting vulnerable populations, which is good.
But…it points a finger.
