More on the delta variant:

I've pulled out data from some other locations that are seeing the spread of delta. None of them are seeing the dramatic rise that the UK has seen, although all are seeing some spread of delta in a situation where other variants are in decline as vaccines become more available.

Germany and Belgium have pretty good vaccine coverage. For Germany, it's 51% at least one dose and 31% fully vaccinated. For Belgium, it's 55% and 31%.

There are some other countries not on this chart that are seeing a suspicious increase in total cases at the same time the delta variant arrived. For example, Vietnam had almost no covid until May of this year. They have only recently started to sequence those cases, and nearly all of them are delta. Almost no one in Vietnam is fully vaccinated.

Russia has been flat in terms of new cases for months, and in just the past few weeks, has seen an increase. Nearly all of those cases are delta. They have about 10% of the population fully vaccinated, and 13% with at least one dose.

So the UK appears to be an outlier here, in that they have high vaccination rates, but also very rapid spread of delta variant. I don't know why, but I don't think that we can assume that delta is going to take off everywhere. It does appear to be causing case number spikes in places with low vaccination rates, so it makes sense to get vaccines out to them as quickly as possible.

It's also worth noting that delta is increasing in the US, not just in terms of percentage of cases, but in terms of absolute numbers. It might continue to increase if it starts to spread in locations with low vaccination rates. Those areas have had more infections, which will probably give some immunity, but we don't really know how much.

So I will be watching the delta variant in the weeks to come, but right now I think the media coverage of it is making it sound like the US and Europe are definitely going to go the way of the UK, and I don't think we can say that given the data we have so far.

The people who are at the most risk from the delta variant are the unvaccinated, and especially people in countries like Vietnam that have had few vaccinations and not many covid cases. They are in the situation where their first major exposure to the virus is in the form of a variant that spreads more easily.