Friday 8 May 2020

Ask Uncle Neil

What a track record, here summarised by the Business Insider:
Michael Thrusfield, a professor of veterinary epidemiology at Edinburgh University, told the paper he had "déjà vu" after reading the Imperial paper, saying Ferguson was responsible for excessive animal culling during the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak.Ferguson warned the government that 150,000 people could die. Six million animals were slaughtered as a precaution, costing the country billions in farming revenue. In the end, 200 people died. 
Similarly, he was accused of creating panic by overestimating the potential death toll during the 2005 Bird Flu outbreak. Ferguson estimated 200 million could die. The real number was in the low hundreds.  
In 2009, one of Ferguson's models predicted 65,000 people could die from the Swine Flu outbreak in the UK — the final figure was below 500. 
On March 16, around a month after the earlier interview, Ferguson delivered a bombshell 20-page paper to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.The message was clear: 510,000 people could die if the government didn't abandon its current strategy of allowing the disease to spread.
The obvious riposte is that the predictions are so insanely off-scale because the Government reacted by, say, trying to kill every farm animal in Britain or demolish the UK economy as a prophylactic measure.

On another view the Government would have done equally well to consult a Panel of defrocked palm readers, bankrupt bookies, Mayan Prophecies mavens... the Flat Earth Society! David Icke (pbuh)! God knows there are plenty of loonies and losers in the UK with a better track record than Prof Pantsdown who might at least have lent some gaiety to the proceedings.




Pictured today: Covids thwarted by the lockdown policy

2 comments:

x said...

Oi! Are you criticising my hero David Icke??

Chertiozhnik said...

I'm increasingly wondering if he ain't right, about those Lizard People from Outer Space being the Queen, Bilderberg group and so forth. Getting harder to see any other explanation for planetary shenanigans if it isn't Lizard People from Outer Space causing a commotion.