Antibody levels by government testing have not shown an increase since May. If we have had real COVID cases since May and if we are not at herd immunity then these levels would have increased.

Why is London at 17% then? COVID resulted in more severe disease and higher antibody levels in non-white people. Those of Asian ethnicity had double the antibody levels of white people and people of black ethnicity had three times the levels.

That is not enough to explain the discrepancy though. There are parts of the country where COVID hit first and we had not all changed our behaviour. These areas seem to have had a sharper rise in COVID deaths. When that happens deaths can overshoot.

This happens because on the day herd immunity is reached lots of people have already caught it. Those susceptible will die. In areas where spread was slowest, at the point herd immunity was reached the minimum number had caught it and deaths were minimised.

A hint of this effect can be seen when looking at deaths in the first 30 hospitals to reach peak deaths and the last 30. But some of this difference may be due to the size and density and other characteristics of the populations those hospitals serve.

COVID was real and lethal and killed many susceptible members of our communities in spring including truly tragic cases. However, we are now at herd immunity. COVID has not gone. It will return in outbreaks in a seasonal way like flu.

But it is not a pandemic anymore. We cannot change our lives forever for it. Plus the changes we have made are causing non-COVID deaths: https://twitter.com/ClareCraigPath/status/1327126149898645506?s=20

There have been lots of concerns about levels dropping. Antibodies rise and fall depending on the job at hand. In addition, we know that these antibodies (IgG to the spike protein) cross react with other human proteins. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246018/

Our bodies remove such antibodies as they are a danger to us and can cause autoimmune disease – where the immune system attacks healthy tissues.

Finally, the same antibody test the Government are using was used in Wuhan (in a specific way). Only 3% of hospital workers had these antibodies. This is does not mean only 3% of them are immune it means only 3% had COVID. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0949-6

We would expect lower levels in South East Asia because of immunity to SARS1 giving the population higher prior immunity than elsewhere.