I think it's very important to work from the evidence of actual infections, positivity and estimates as a cohesive group. Increases from uni students now I think is a factor solely of increased testing, their positivity is low enough to pretty much wipe out any peaks compared with other age groups.
I think most of you know me well enough to know that I've said since May that the evidence is for only very slightly lower infection rates under 16, noticeably lower infection rates in under 14, significantly lower infection rates for under 10s. The schools data bore this out, it wasn't until very high infection rates in specific areas that there started to be noticeable issue with secondary and SEN schools, compared with infections caused by adults in masks.in other workplaces it was a world apart. I'm sorry to say, but over the last few weeks that pattern has distinctly changed in SE and London and it is no longer true with the new strain. The spread at 10-14 is remarkably high, they are in school the same as before but something changed in the infectivity and it affected the parents 45-55 quickly afterwards, like a wave spreading between the boroughs rather than linked with half term breaks, then dribbled into other ages. What's needed is per-age case and positivity mapping in Friday's surveillance report to add to the ONS report data. What I'm wondering is whether the increased infectivity of kids, especially amplified by schools, is enough to cause the 70% expected increase, I suspect it actually might be driving say 50% and 20% down to Christmas mixing idiocy. If that's the case then it's bad news for schools opening again, but good news for workplaces that existing precautions are still sufficient. If it isn't, then factory and office outbreaks will be so hard to separate from Christmas stupidity in January that it'll take a long time to see what the situation is.
What I can't see yet is such a big impact on under-10s separately from "infections higher in local area so go up", but ONS suggests it's up and if this variant is so much more infectious then I would expect at least some impact there too. I'm a bit surprised not to see it in the cases. Could be we're missing it in testing because not enough time has passed yet (little kids seem to increase testing last of all age groups), or could be the ACE2 receptor is even more important.