I went to see if I could find the answer to a lot of questions I had about that chart, namely:
1. Were people asked about their behaviour over a short recent time period - say the last week - or over a potentially longer period of time, such as all the time since they received their first vaccination? This is important for 2 reasons - firstly, if it's the latter then we're relying on memory over time and memory fades very quickly about specific minor events; and secondly, if it's the former, then each of those bars on the chart is representing a different group of people so small differences might not be anything to do with changes in behaviour over time but purely random noise due to each one being different people.
2. Is any more detail available about who people met with?
3. How many people were in the survey - especially the "had 2 jabs" group, since by mid Feb that was a pretty small number of people.
I found these answers:
1. It's not quite either of those but is closer to the second option. People were asked about whether they had met anyone since their vaccination and then those were broken down by people who had had them in the last 3 weeks or longer ago than that. So, while anyone in the "in the last 3 weeks" cohort will have been under full lockdown rules for all that time, and can probably remember fairly well, those who are in the "more than 3 weeks ago" cohort, could well have not been under full lockdown rules for the whole time. Anyone who had their first jab before Christmas - and that would probably be most people who had had 2 jabs - will have had some level of freedom in that time, including the special stupid Christmas rules where people in large swathes of the country were allowed to meet people indoors over Christmas. That being the case, I'm actually surprised at how
low the numbers of people are who met someone indoors in the "had 2 jabs" group. But then, we're back to the memory thing - people might have been thinking about just the last few weeks while Christmas seems like an age ago.
2. Yes there is. People could tick as many boxes as apply, so these numbers can't be added up but, for those who have only received one dose, we have:
Support bubble: 36%
Friends: 5%
Spouse/partner: 5%
Child/children: 22%
Grandchild/grandchildren: 8%
Members of community: 4%
Visitors who support personal care such as nurses or care support workers: 11%
Other: 11%
Have met with nobody indoors: 34%
So, ignoring the support bubble and care providers, we have child/children as the biggest number with grandchild/grandchildren in 3rd. But there's no information on the reason - they could have been providing care, bringing in shopping, or even have been part of a support bubble. Remember, people could tick as many boxes as applied. If I was a single elderly person and my support bubble was my child and their children, instructed to tick all boxes that applied, I would have ticked support bubble AND child/children AND grandchild/grandchildren. I see no evidence of f.ckwittery here. There
may be f.ckwittery but we cannot tell for sure.
2nd highest is Other - 11%. This is probably where your plumbers, oven repair people, electricians, etc, etc, will fall. No evidence of rule-breaking there but there could be, we can't possibly tell. I see no evidence of f.ckwittery here. There
may be f.ckwittery but we cannot tell for sure.
Then we have friends and spouse/partner. The latter is likely to be people visiting a spouse/partner in a care home, plus a few people whose partner does live elsewhere, plus a few people who missed the part in the question that said to only include people you don't live with. Now, I haven't kept up with govt rules on care home visits as it's not relevant to me, and annoyingly the .gov.uk website has already been updated to only show rules from Monday 8th onwards so perhaps others can comment but I think that care home visits have been allowed at some care homes and under some circumstances? Friends? Could easily be care, again, or shopping delivery, or other needed help such as some necessary home maintenance. Again, I see no evidence of f.ckwittery here. There
may be f.ckwittery but we cannot tell for sure.
What does that leave us? Just members of community - again, nothing to tell the reason and again, could easily be someone delivering groceries to someone who would struggle to carry them in from the doorstep.
There is ZERO evidence here of any rule-breaking. There may be some hiding behind the valid reasons for those people visiting, but there may not.
3. Answering the relevant question, we have a total of 2,042 people weighted to represent 2,799,000 population. That's a decent number, fair enough. And for the 2 doses? Just 305 people weighted to represent 423,000 people. 305 people is not a huge number so those numbers are going to have a fairly wide confidence interval around them.
So, while I totally understand the anger expressed in this forum, I don't think describing people as fuckwits without understanding their full personal circumstances, is very helpful. And describing
anyone as a f.ckwit based on the chart which initiated this discussion is entirely unfair based, as it is, on evidence that is thin at best.
ETA: My source for all this - the data set behind that chart:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... population
I am supposed to be working so only had a very swift look and may have made errors. Please feel free to point out to me anything I've missed, although if anyone describes me as a f.ckwit as a result, I will not be answerable for my actions.