One in three Londoners unvaxxed?

[JanisMoplin]

I saw this stat whiz by on Twitter, but could not find a source. If true, can anyone tell me why? Is it because London has a larger proportion of the young and children? It is alarming.

A lot of the Londoners who are down as being unvaccinated are actually living elsewhere and have had their shots

Your jabs are recorded against your NHS number, if they've moved away and had their jabs, then they will count as a vaccinated London person

Westminster's apparent low take up is probably specific to that location and driven by very different factors to the low uptake rate in socially deprived areas.

Although in inner London you can have both factors in adjacent streets in the same MSOA. I happen to know that the large brand new tower blocks round Tottenham Hale have a high number of well off highly mobile and/or international owners and occupants who may well have moved home or been vaccinated in other countries. The council estates one street over might have genuinely low uptakes for other reasons.

@UnmentionedElephantDildo

A lot of the Londoners who are down as being unvaccinated are actually living elsewhere and have had their shots

Your jabs are recorded against your NHS number, if they've moved away and had their jabs, then they will count as a vaccinated London person

Unfortunately (for statistical purposes) they don't literally match them up person by person, they just count the numbers vaccinated in that area and measure it against the NIMS record of population in the area. It's come at the worst possible time in the census cycle because our official population count is a full ten years out of date.

@MsWarrensProfession

It's probably not quite true because the denominator they use to calculate the proportion registered comes from the people registered with GPs. Because the London population is more mobile they end up with more people double registered with their old GPs and hence the population count used is more overstated in London than elsewhere. A lot of the Londoners who are down as being unvaccinated are actually living elsewhere and have had their shots. The same effect explains that dodgy stat that was doing the rounds a couple of months ago purporting to show that vaccinated people of working age are more likely to contract the virus than unvaccinated people.

However it wouldn't explain the whole difference. London also has a younger and hence less vaccinated population than the rest of the UK, and a higher population from minorities whose members are less likely to take up vaccination for various reasons - although the local authorities haven't given up and are still trying to increase coverage.

A lot of people I know (in their mid 30s by now!) will admit to still being registered with GPs by their parents houses or even the GP they registered with at university! The women often tend to quickly find a GP when they first start trying for a baby. There are a lot of people, I would include myself in this, who other than pregnancy don’t use the health service really at all. I don’t think DH has visited a doctor in all the years I’ve known him. I think he is probably registered with our local surgery but there’s a not small chance he isn’t.

I do believe London is behind on vaccinations for many reasons but GP registration seems a pretty poor metric to use.

I meant elsewhere in UK, of course.

Emigrants, whether from London or anywhere else that has seen an exodus, couid skew figures. But presumably that's true for certain other cities and some towns?

London is huge - population close to the size of Wales, NI and Scotland combined. The need to avoid being perceived as unfairly 'London centric' means that its needs are sometimes overlooked.

It's the only region that is regularly a net contributor of public finance to the rest of the country. If London gets it badly, then the wider economic consequences hit everyone. No other place couid have that effect.

@UnmentionedElephantDildo I think Londoners are probably more likely to move abroad due to a more international population. 2 of my SIL who grew up in London have moved abroad. The previous occupant of my flat moved back to Ireland.. certainly during the pandemic a lot of Europeans moved back home. My sister's friend who works in London got her jabs in Singapore! If I was a single, I would probably have done that cos now I need a serology test to validate my vaccine in Singapore!

Who else initially read the title as 'unwaxxed?!' Just me? 🤦🏼‍♀️

It's been previously reported that a million people are thought to have left London in the last two years, many of them leaving the country (brexit + COVID) This will skew the denominator figures, especially as most people leaving the country don't bother deregistering with GPs

There are tens of thousands of international students in London, they may be registered with GPs but were vaccinated abroad

I think the true number is fairly high but a lot of experts have been criticising the one in three story and it does not sound right

My unvaxed friends

According to yesterday’s Times it’s down to a) a significant percentage of younger, fairly transient people who aren’t registered with a GP, and b) the traditional wariness/reluctance of certain ethnic groups when it comes to vaccines.

Sorry premature posting!

My unvaxed friends in London are all degree educated, middle class white people.

So bloody infuriatingly selfish with a weird cognitive dissonance going on 🤬

I have no time patience of sympathy left for the unvaccinated. I have a friend who won’t be vaccinated- I won’t be seeing them again until the bulk of covid is over.

SA has

The rates of cases in various parts of London are very high

Well I can tell you some are inaccurate. I moved overseas 5 years ago. I tried to deregister with gp multiple times before and over the last 5 years.
I have still been contacted several times asking when Or if will vaccinate. I have repeatedly told them I don’t live there anymore, please take off list, and I’m fully vaccinated but overseas.

Still got another message from gp this morning…

@Panacotta

Sorry premature posting!

My unvaxed friends in London are all degree educated, middle class white people.

So bloody infuriatingly selfish with a weird cognitive dissonance going on 🤬

We really need to stop with the ‘selfish’ accusations now that we know that the vaccine is more about reducing your own individual risk than preventing infection/transmission. It’s not helpful to talk about other people like that. Particularly when many of them have had the virus already.

I do also wonder if London's figures are slightly skewed by a more transient population.
I keep getting reminders for people who lived at my address previously who emigrated to Australia.
Wonder how many people are on a database that moved back home when this all started

I am an ethnic minority.
I get annoyed with ethnic minorities being all lumped in to one massive homogenous mass for general data purposes. There will be differences when it’s broken down further. For example Bangladeshi children have the worst educational outcomes and Chinese children have the best though there are always outliers. I looked for a further breakdown but the best I could find was south asian, black and white. It’s early days for long term research and publication but when a broad mass of data is published in this way and used for a headline it’s a very blunt instrument.

@CharSiu

I am an ethnic minority. I get annoyed with ethnic minorities being all lumped in to one massive homogenous mass for general data purposes. There will be differences when it’s broken down further. For example Bangladeshi children have the worst educational outcomes and Chinese children have the best though there are always outliers. I looked for a further breakdown but the best I could find was south asian, black and white. It’s early days for long term research and publication but when a broad mass of data is published in this way and used for a headline it’s a very blunt instrument.

This is very true. All my own ethnic minority friends rushed to get the vaccine and all their teens have been vaxxed. There is a vast variation. Also in our susceptibility to the virus.

I haven't lived in London for years but I've just put the two postcodes I lived in when I did into the BBC tool. One area is 'deprived' (Haringey), the other is affluent (Kensington and Chelsea, although there are some pockets of severe deprivation in K&C). These are the results - not much difference.

The vaccination figures where I live now are still not brilliant, but they're a lot higher than these.

“ We really need to stop with the ‘selfish’ accusations now that we know that the vaccine is more about reducing your own individual risk than preventing infection/transmission. It’s not helpful to talk about other people like that. Particularly when many of them have had the virus already.”

Have you not seen the stats on the proportion of Covid patients in hospital that are unvaccinated??
That is what is contributing to the NHS being on its knees at the moment.

@TheVampiresWife so many homes in K & C are owned by foreigners/second home owners. They would have gone back home (outside the UK) during the pandemic.

I think there's a huge language barrier in London which will account for some of it. People are scared, and if they can't understand what's going on around them then it's only natural for them to try to hide from it. Unfortunately it's the ethnic minorities that are at greater risk of having serious complications from covid. I'm not sure how you overcome that issue, it's a difficult one.

A quick snapshot of my local area (London suburbs) reveals that people of my age (approx 50) and in 40's where possible are all vaccinated and including my DP's who are older. This includes a range of ethnicities and ages. Some haven't got booster yet but are waiting on it. DB and his DW in London also vaccinated including booster but her DF has an immune compromised condition (not in London).

Most people in my street (ranging from 30s to elderly) some with health condition if younger - the 30s ones aren't vaccinated or only 1 or 2 jabs, these have then been people who've caught Covid and has been from DC at primary school or DC at secondary school. Two DPs who temporarily relocated to Canada over summer have got all vaccinations. One parent has a DC who's 17 who is an anti-vaxxer and unsure if she and her new DH are vaccinated. London family friends who have DC, have heard of one DC who's in 20s but living at home who recently caught Covid, he has a DSis with diabetes and anxiety who's worried about Covid. A close relative of theirs in early 50s has recently caught Covid through visiting her DPs.

I'd guess that teens and in 20's won't get the vaccine at all.

@stingofthebutterfly its south asians and black people that are likely to have complications from covid.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/whyhaveblackandsouthasianpeoplebeenhithardestbycovid19/2020-12-14