In his recent article, @cjsnowdon claims that England's November lockdown was a good example of lockdown effectiveness. Let’s look at that claim using the ONS death-by-date registration data which have now been updated for the relevant period.

Although there is some uncertainty over the average lag between infections and death, we should expect any effect of lockdown to be visible in the deaths series after about three weeks.
If the 5th November lockdown had been effective, we might expect a beneficial effect on the deaths trend from about 26 Nov and an adverse effect from about 23 Dec, reflecting the relaxation on 2 Dec.

So what actually happened?
Nationally, deaths peak on 21 Nov, 16 days after the lockdown, almost certainly too early for that to be the cause.

Deaths increase again from 4 Dec implying infections increased right in the middle of the national lockdown.
That increase may be due to the new variant, but we would still expect to see a steeper increase 3 weeks or so after lockdown was released. In fact, there is little if any clear effect on the trend.
Regional data can give more insights: LD2 should have had a bigger impact on areas not already under T2/3 restrictions: Lon, E, SE, SW.

Also, as these areas largely returned to lower tiers on 2 Dec, relaxation shd have a bigger adverse effect than in North/Mids.

What do we see?
Deaths in NW, NE & Yorks were decreasing before Lockdown 2 could have had an effect (& decreases in Yorks & NE slow soon after). EM/WM stable before & after likely impact.

Similarly no clear, consistent effect after LD2 lifted.
What about regions which should have been more affected? Still hard to see much effect at all.

Poss SE & L stabilised a little after LD but briefly. No consistent effect on trends from Dec relaxation: perhaps L accelerates a bit, but E slows down. SW little affected by either.
This is consistent with hospital admissions which should be affected some 10-12 days after LD/relaxation.

In fact admissions decreased from 12 Nov, too early for lockdown to be the cause & had started increasing again by 30 Nov, before the lockdown had even been lifted.
Given other things going on (tiers, new variant etc) we can't completely rule out some marginal effect of lockdown.

But it is hard to see much in the data to suggest England's November lockdown was effective in preventing any deaths or hospitalisations at all.

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Tomorrow, January 6th, MAGA chuds, Proud Boys, and white supremacists are planned to descend on Washington D.C. to contest the election. Among them will be NSC-131, a New England based neo-Nazi organization. Let's welcome them by saying hi to one of their members, Eddie Stuart!


Edward Stuart, from Chester, New Hampshire, has been a member of Nationalist Social Club (NSC) since the very beginning and is a staple participant in their actions. He is known in NSC chats as "Carl Jung" and is well connected in the New England Nazi scene.
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NSC-131 is a neo-Nazi group that was started in Massachusetts in early 2020 by Chris Hood. You can learn more about NSC and it's members in these threads:


Eddie describes his ideology as "Esoteric Hitlerism" which is an occult form of Nazism that literally worships Adolf Hitler as a god, or, specifically, as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Here is Ed holding the RigVeda with some of his occult Nazi pals. Interesting Ed!
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Much of this ideological insight was gained from Eddie's Twitter, where he originally used his "Carl Jung" persona and reposts explicit neo-fascist content and racist memes. In one edited picture, Eddie can be seen at an NSC event in late June 2020 holding a Nazi Sonnenrad flag
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Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.