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Jan 14Liked by Oliver Johnson

Interestingly when looking at different age groups, can see young adults peaking 1st a few weeks before Christmas, with the oldest looking like they peaked getting infected practical on Christmas day. So I am not expecting the return to school/office to make much difference as it seems much of that group peaked before start of Christmas holidays.

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I think if that's true, it would be interesting. It's plausible enough I think. I guess my caution is around the fact that the variant mix will be worse in the New Year than back then (maybe 70% JN.1 now, 50% then). Plus there's the issue that once you start splitting into subsamples, you start to run into sample size issues - it's not obvious to me why 65-74 and 75+ would look so different, trajectory-wise. We'll see soon enough though I guess

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Jan 13Liked by Oliver Johnson

The international synchronisation is very interesting. I do wonder what sets the heartbeat for the synchronisation? Presumably some international transfer of virus strains, like perhaps international flight. At the beginning of Covid, unnecessary flights and other forms of travel were cancelled and waves in different countries were separated by several months in some cases.

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Yes, I think the situation was different then, but I think now international travel is more or less back to normal (and there's not really testing or quarantine at any borders), once something is in one place it will be somewhere else soon. But still, immunity is different everywhere, and the rate at which the first few cases become say 100 will vary due to random chance, so you don't expect things to be absolutely completely in sync I think.

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