Until this summer, the experience of both countries, which are roughly as wealthy as each other, was very similar. Both had a bad first wave, a worse second wave thanks to alpha, and then a sharp decline. But when it comes to deaths, the U.S. third wave is now almost as bad as the first, while the U.K. isn’t having a third wave at all. How to explain this?
Epidemiologists have the rest of their lives to answer that question. But using Occam’s Razor, we know that the vaccine came along early this year, and the vaccine would certainly explain the sharp decline in both countries’ death rates. And if we look at how many people have actually been vaccinated in the U.K. and the U.S., we have the inkling of an explanation:
Nothing went wrong with the supply of vaccine in the U.S. in the early summer. At this point, all adults in both countries have had ample opportunity to get vaccinated if they wish, free of charge. That is why the problem appears to be political. People in both countries are free not to get the vaccine. Americans are choosing to make far more use of that freedom. That leads to large pools of unvaccinated people in parts of the country, which makes it easier for the more contagious variant to take hold, and gives it more opportunities to infect the vaccinated as well.
A working hypothesis might be that there is enough “herd immunity” within the U.K. to keep the death toll from the virus within bearable bounds. But in the U.S., the choice has been made to eschew herd immunity and allow the deaths to continue.
Looking at the numbers for Texas and Florida, the two large states where Republican governors have vocally refused to enforce social distancing and where there is great skepticism toward the vaccine, the results are startling. I compiled the following chart the same way as the earlier comparison of the U.S. and the U.K., indexing both states’ death rates to the peak in the first wave, which in the southern U.S. came in August last year. As with the U.S. and the U.K., the pattern was remarkably similar until early this summer. Since then, Texas has endured a clear-cut third wave. The experience in Florida is remarkable, and suggests that there is more to the problem than vaccine hesitancy:
Unlike virtually anywhere else in the Western world, Florida is in the midst of a third wave much worse than the first two. Without getting too political, this makes the state’s current policies toward the virus very hard to understand; and also makes the current death toll look like the result of deliberate decisions, both by politicians and individuals. This is only a hypothesis, and it looks as though there is more to the Floridian third wave than resistance to vaccines, but numbers like this help explain why investors are calm.
As with inflation, much rests on this. At present, it appears, markets are priced on the assumption that the virus doesn’t come up with a variant that resists current vaccines. Let’s hope that’s right.
Survival Tips
As you read this, Yom Kippur has started. For 25 hours, the world’s Jews put themselves through a Day of Atonement, thinking about where they have gone wrong in life, and what they can do to put it right; and fasting throughout the time to help concentrate the mind.