An Enigma: Transmission Of Epidemic Influenza (part 4)

I attempt to shed light on the riddle that is seasonal influenza using my bag of spanners. Today I derive some mid-year population estimates for the period 1901 - 2022

I could write a steamy novel about the estimation of the national population and associated sub-populations, this being a subject I was forced to confront as a government suit. The story kicks-off back in 1985, and has plagued me pretty much every year right up to my departure from that profession in 2000. Here I am in 2025 still fiddling!

As we may surmise modelled estimates are calibrated using national census data and, surreal as it may seem to me now, I was meeting-up with suits from the Office for National Statistics a few years prior to the 2001 National Census. I recall my very first planning meeting with them for I sat most of the way through with a red face.

Back in those days crumbling Marsham Towers were where it was ‘at’ for all things environment and transport, and I’d be whizzing up and down one of those towers on a regular basis. Come the big-meet day my train was late getting into Waterloo and I had to skedaddle as best I could. I arrived at the conference room on the t…