Newsletter 14th
July 2021
RootsTech London cancelled
again
Hidden London tram
station opens to the public after nearly 70 years
Family, kinship and the Poor Law
Falling in love all
over again
Review: Tracing
Your Ancestors Using the UK Historical Timeline
The LostCousins
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Precisely
one year ago, on 14th July 2020, I wrote in this newsletter:
"The one thing we cant do, at least in
the UK, is go back to the way things were 6 months ago and perhaps we never
will. I'd like to think that some of the changes that have benefited the
environment will become permanent working from home more often and less
business travel would make a world of difference (and perhaps a different
world)."
As
the Delta variant spreads around the world it has
become clear that we are going to have to live with COVID-19, just as we live
with colds and flu. The vaccines that have been deployed so far are remarkably
effective, thank goodness, but they can't stop the
virus circulating they can only reduce the severity of the disease and, hopefully,
help us keep the annual death toll to a level that society is prepared to
accept.
Had
the original strain been as infectious as the Delta variant it's
likely that hundreds of millions of lives would have been lost during the time
that it took to develop and thoroughly test the vaccines we've been very
lucky, but there is an awful lot still to be done.
Wherever you live in the world, I'm
sure you'll have read in the news that England is planning to drop almost all
legal restrictions on 19th July, leaving it to members of the public to take
whatever precautions against COVID-19 they personally deem necessary. (Other
parts of the UK have a more nuanced approach.)
Many have commented that it seems a strange time to
relax restrictions: daily infections are at their highest rate for months, and even
now case numbers are doubling roughly every 2 weeks (at one point it was taking
just 9 days). Removing restrictions will inevitably lead to even higher case
numbers, with many predicting over 100,000 reported cases per day which, if you
allow for the fact that some people who are infected don't
get symptoms and some who have symptoms don't get tested, could mean that
before long over a million people a week are contracting COVID-19.
If you haven't been following
the scientists it may surprise you to know that there is some logic behind the move
by 19th July everyone over 18 who wants a vaccine will have had at least one dose,
and most will have had both doses. Opening up next
week will benefit the economy, but that doesn't seem to be the primary driver
it's actually an attempt to bring forward the next peak in COVID-19 infections
so that it doesn't coincide with the seasonal peak in other respiratory
illnesses such as influenza and pneumonia. This table shows how the vaccine has
dramatically lowered the number of deaths as a percentage of cases three weeks
earlier:
|
SEVEN DAY MOVING AVERAGES FOR UK |
|||||
|
Cases |
Deaths |
% of cases 21 days
previously |
|||
|
3rd Dec |
14378 |
441 |
|||
|
10th Dec |
16199 |
425 |
|||
|
17th Dec |
22924 |
425 |
|||
|
24th Dec |
34153 |
511 |
3.55% |
||
|
31st Dec |
42730 |
556 |
3.43% |
||
|
7th Jan |
57490 |
715 |
3.12% |
||
|
14th Jan |
52782 |
1074 |
3.14% |
||
|
21st Jan |
40334 |
1226 |
2.87% |
||
|
28th Jan |
28487 |
1222 |
2.13% |
||
|
17th May |
2202 |
11 |
|||
|
24th May |
2597 |
6 |
|||
|
31st May |
3346 |
8 |
|||
|
7th June |
5114 |
8 |
0.36% |
||
|
14th June |
7440 |
10 |
0.39% |
||
|
21st June |
9779 |
11 |
0.33% |
||
|
28th June |
16323 |
17 |
0.33% |
||
|
5th July |
25029 |
18 |
0.24% |
||
|
12th July |
32239 |
29 |
0.30% |
||
There are three groups which dont
have the protection of the vaccine: the smallest comprises those who have been advised
by their doctors not to have the vaccine; the largest consists of healthy under-18s,
who are at very low risk. The third group includes those who have chosen for whatever
reason not to be vaccinated. Those last two groups are reservoirs in which
the virus can flourish and will inevitably spread to some of those who have
been vaccinated because, whilst the vaccines are very effective
at preventing serious illness and death, they're not nearly as effective at
preventing infection.
The vaccine programme in the UK has been incredibly
successful as I write over 87% of the adult population (18 and over) have
received at least one dose, and almost two-thirds have received both doses. Amongst
the over-50s, who are at most risk from COVID-19, the percentage who have
received at least one dose is over 90%, far higher than anyone could have
predicted a year ago, and were it not for the fact
that the Delta variant is so much more infectious it would be job done herd immunity
would have been achieved.
According to
this article
from The Lancet, R0 (the
reproductive number) for the original strain was 2.5, meaning that if life had
continued as normal with no precautions each infected person would, on average,
infect 2 or 3 others. This makes it about twice as infectious as influenza, and
I suspect that's largely because flu symptoms show up very quickly whereas those
who have contracted COVID-19 can be pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic. Estimates
of R0 for the Delta variant range between 5 and 8 the Lancet article suggests it's nearly 7 which makes herd immunity virtually impossible
with the current vaccines, because whilst they are more than 90% effective at
preventing serious illness and death, they're not nearly as effective at stopping
milder infections. We also know that prior infection doesn't
prevent someone catching the disease again, though like the vaccines it
improves the odds.
It's possible that in time there will be even better vaccines, but for the foreseeable
future the only way to get back to (near) normal is to maximise the proportion
of the population who are resistant to COVID-19, either because of vaccination
or prior infection, and at the same time to encourage individuals to take sensible
precautions, such as handwashing and wearing masks in crowded indoor
environments, including public transport.
So far the vaccination
programme has provided most of the resistance the most recent Office for
National Statistics (ONS) survey found that around 9 in 10 adults in the UK have
antibodies in their blood, only a little higher than the number of people who
have had at least one jab. Unfortunately there are
some sections of the community which have been sceptical about vaccination, and
it's hard to envisage attitudes changing significantly in the near future.
I said earlier that there are two large groups that
will act as potential reservoirs for the virus those who have refused
vaccination, and those who have not been offered it because of their youth. It wouldnt
be ethical to vaccinate children in order to reduce the risk to adults, because
children are themselves at very low risk in England only 25 under-18s died of
COVID-19 during the first 12 months of the pandemic (see this BBC article for more information).
Whilst the death of any child is sad, compared to the total number of deaths
from COVID-19 it is a very small figure indeed.
Currently the prevalence of the virus in younger
people is much higher than in older people in England only around 1 in 600 of
over-70s had the virus at the beginning of July, but the figure for 16 to 24-year olds was closer to 1 in 45, and even for 6 to 10-year
olds it was 1 in 110. It's likely that as restrictions
are relaxed the disparity will continue to widen.
Many have accused the Westminster government of
putting out confusing and sometimes contradictory signals, but I suspect they're
trying to get different messages out to different
groups. The fact is, if younger people and those who are never going to come
forward for vaccination acquire natural immunity by becoming infected over the
next two months, it should help to protect the National Health Service against a
winter surge.
But even after two vaccinations older people are
far more likely to suffer serious illness than youngsters, so I'm going to remain cautious in fact, I'm going to be more
cautious. On Tuesday of last week my wife and I went out for a pub meal for the
first time since 12th March last year we saw it as a brief window of
opportunity before the floodgates open on 19th July. I suspect that many
readers of this newsletter will be just as careful as us.
Note: for more
information see this BBC article;
although I've written about England I suspect most countries in the developed
world will be faced with similar decisions over the next year.
RootsTech London cancelled again
For
the second year in a row RootsTech London has been cancelled due to the ongoing
pandemic. Now FamilySearch have announced that RootsTech 2022, to be held next
March, will be virtual and free.
Hidden London tram station opens to the public after
nearly 70 years
Kingsway
tram station in central London closed in 1952 but after nearly 70 years it is
going to be opening to the public for tours. See this article
from The Guardian for more details and photographs.
DNA isn't cheating
When
I began to research my family tree almost 20 years ago most family historians
were still working with pencil and paper it took quite a while before the use
of computers caught on, and even now there are a few family history societies
which still have separate computer sections.
There
must be very few researchers reading this who doubt the usefulness of computers
and the Internet, but I know that there are many who are still sceptical about
DNA. Some dont think it works, even though it has
been proven time and time again that it does others seem to think that it's
cheating, and that making use of DNA somehow devalues the conventional
records-based research that has been their mainstay for decades.
DNA
isn't cheating, nor does it replace conventional
research what it actually does is to help us overcome gaps and deficiencies in
the records, whether they're the result of misunderstandings, clerical error, deliberate
deception, or the accidental loss or destruction of the records themselves. The
key advantage of DNA is that it doesn't lie its an
audit trail that leads back to the ancestors whose DNA we have inherited.
If,
like me, you've got 'brick walls' that you've been up against
for the best part of 20 years then DNA is probably the only way you'll ever
knock them down!
When
I first tested my DNA I was surprised to discover that
I shared much more DNA than I expected with some of my cousins, and much less
with others it took me a while to realise just how random the inheritance of
DNA is.
Whilst
all of our DNA comes from our ancestors, how much we
inherit from each ancestor varies enormously. True, you inherit half of your
autosomal DNA from each parent, but after that it gets more variable you certainly
wont have inherited precisely 25% from each grandparent,
and even if you did, you wouldn't have inherited exactly the same segments as
your siblings and cousins.
To
get a better understanding of how DNA works take a standard pack of 52 playing cards,
shuffle them, then deal out 13 cards this represents the one-quarter of your
grandparents' DNA that you inherited. You might imagine that each suit represents
one of your grandparents inevitably you'll have more
cards of some suits than others.
Now
take another pack of cards and repeat the process this second hand of 13 cards
represents the DNA of one of your 1st cousins. There will almost certainly be a
different balance between the four suits, but if you compare the two hands carefully you'll see that some cards appear in both hands
they represent the DNA that you share with your cousin.
All of the cards come from identical packs, but
which of those cards are in each hand is random. The number of cards that
appear in both hands is very random, as you'll see if
you repeat the exercise a few times (in my trials it varied from 1 to 4). The
amount of DNA you share with your cousins varies in a similar way and whilst
the amount of shared DNA tends to be higher for close cousins and lower for
distant cousins, deducing precisely what the relationship is from the amount of
DNA you share is usually impossible.
In
the following article I demonstrate a better way to work out a relationship,
still using DNA, but doing it rather differently.
Recently
a LostCousins member mentioned on the forum that they had a match with a 1st
cousin once removed, but couldnt be sure whether the
other person was a full cousin (two common ancestors) or a half cousin (one
common ancestor).
Here's how you might do it if you were in that
position:
Let's
supposed that Paula Harrison has a DNA match with Adam Smith,
and can work out that they're both descended from John Smith, but isn't
sure whether Adam is descended from Emma Brown or a different wife which would
make him a half cousin.
DNA
is a bit like a jigsaw with a jigsaw the more pieces you can put into place
the easier it gets, with DNA the more cousins you can place on your tree the easier
it gets to work out where other DNA matches fit in.
In
this case what's needed are matches with descendants
of John Smith's ancestors and separate matches with descendants of Emma Brown's
ancestors. These matches need not be shared by both Paula and Adam, but unless
Paula and Adam agree to collaborate Paula won't be
able to see Adam's matches. Looking for shared matches is often the most
practical solution in the short-term.
If
Paula and Adam both have matches with descendants of John Smith's ancestors then that confirms their connections to John Smith;
if they both have matches with descendants of Emma Brown's ancestors then that confirms
their connection to Emma Brown. However if Adam
doesn't have any matches with descendants of Emma Brown's ancestors its likely
that he is descended from one of John Smith's other wives.
Family, kinship
and the Poor Law
This
short article
from the Open University struck home for me, since I've recently discovered that
another of my ancestors ended up in the workhouse well worth a look.
There
arent many people who have a single character surname.
I stumbled across this one in the GRO death indexes for 1909:
Falling in love all over again
This
story
of a man with Alzheimer's who forgot he was married and proposed to his wife is
really touching I hope you'll read it!
Review: Tracing Your Ancestors Using the UK Historical
Timeline
I was not expecting to
find this book useful for a start there is very little
in it that would help experienced family historians, as almost all readers of
this newsletter are, trace their ancestors.
And
yet as I went through the book, adding tabs as I found information that was of
direct interest to me, I gradually came to realise what a very
useful book this is!
You
can see many, but not all of the numerous tabs in the
photo on the right of my review copy (some are hidden behind other tabs there
must be 30 or 40 in all).
There
are two ways in which you can use this book the most obvious is to put your
ancestors' lives into historical context, and that's
probably what the authors intended. But for me the best aspect of the book was
making discoveries about records, or events, or changes in legislation that are
going to help me in my future research.
If
you have ancestors from the UK you're likely to find
this book just as useful as I have thoroughly recommended! Out now in the UK,
out next month in other territories (but you can place a pre-release order
now).
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
This is where any major updates and corrections will be
highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error
first reload the newsletter (press Ctrl-F5) then check again before writing to me, in case someone else has
beaten you to it......
This has been a rather different newsletter some might not think
there is enough family history content, but I suspect that future generations
will see things differently!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2021 Peter Calver
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