Covid: Europe's winter wave and the contrast vs. UK

I find this less convincing. Europe is missing Sweden and Spain. Obviously, there might be reasons but this omission is reducing its predictive power. The rest are simple truisms – vaccines work but not enough; boosters can help especially for elderly etc. And still some big waves just happen and who knows, if we wait longer, Sweden, Spain un UK might experience bigger waves as well.

This is an excellen twitter thread with lots of data, but if you're looking for the TLDR, here is the summary from the end of the twitter thread:

- UK’s July reopening likely generated enough infection-acquired immunity to shield it from continent’s winter wave

- But that came at a cost of thousands of deaths, far higher rate than peer countries [so far]

- Boosters also key to UK’s current successes

- If western European countries can accelerate booster rollout they can blunt the wave, esp in terms of hospitalisations & deaths

- But some, like Austria, are hamstrung by low uptake of the primary course. You can’t boosted the unvaxxed, and Austria has a lot of them.