Life Will “Feel a Lot More Normal By the Summer”, Says Neil Ferguson

3 min read

Professor Neil Ferguson says that the success of the U.K.’s vaccine rollout means life will feel more normal by the summer, though we will still “not [be] completely back to normal“. His predictions echo recent reports that while many restrictions will come to an end on June 21st, mask-wearing and caps on numbers attending large events could stay in place past the “end” of lockdown. But with Covid cases and deaths continuing to fall, more MPs – and even papers – are asking why restrictions can’t come to an end now. MailOnline has more.

The SAGE Adviser and Imperial College London Epidemiologist, whose sobering death toll predictions led Britain into its first lockdown last year, said today that he expects the vaccine rollout to help keep the U.K. out of lockdown for good. 

His comments will be seized upon by the Tory MPs calling for the roadmap to normality to be sped up…

Sir Robert Syms, Tory MP for Poole in Dorset, yesterday said: “We need to push the Government to get on with it. A lot of normal life could be returned.” He said the country would “lose another summer” if rules aren’t eased soon. 

The PM has so far refused to budge in the face of calls for more freedom. Trade Secretary Liz Truss this morning dodged questions about whether she thought it should be sped up and told talkRADIO: “We do need to make sure any opening up is irreversible.”

… Professor Ferguson said that jabs appear to work so well that they may hold the virus at bay even in the autumn and winter, when experts fear it will make a comeback like flu. 

He added that the ratio of cases to hospital admissions would be much lower next time around and it was unlikely there will be any danger of the NHS getting overwhelmed.

He admitted “we do expect transmission” when society fully reopens in June but suggested vaccination should replace the need for lockdowns and the U.K. is “in a very good position” to stick to plans for June 21st.

Professor Ferguson’s main fear now is the threat of Covid variants, against which he believes “booster [vaccine] doses” should be administered.

Other advisers to SAGE last week published a study showing that Pfizer’s jab protects well against the South African variant after people have had both doses.

Professor Ferguson said: “The risk from variants, where vaccines are less effective is the major concern. That’s the one thing that could still lead to a very major third wave in the autumn.

“So I think it’s essential that we roll out booster doses which can protect against that as soon as we finish vaccinating the adult population which should finish by the summer…

“It’s much better to be vaccinating people than shutting down the whole of society. 

“So I think, with that one caveat, I am feeling fairly optimistic that we will be – not completely back to normal – but something that feels a lot more normal by the summer.”

Worth reading in full.

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127 Comments
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imp66
imp66
5 years ago

Look up “Ferguson” in the dictionary : “arrogant, narcissistic twat. Continually wrong in all predictions: never admits errors. B.S. a specialty. Likes to play away. “

Churchman
Churchman
5 years ago

Why does anyone give this man and his comments any credence?

IanC
IanC
5 years ago

How is this snake oil salesman still in the public eye? He should be put in the stocks and gagged forever! How can anyone survive with a track record like his? Anyone who isn’t aware of it must have been living on the dark side of the moon for the last 2 years or more.

imp66
imp66
5 years ago

“Variants” or deviants….?

Milo
Milo
5 years ago

This line, I thought, was very telling.
“It’s much better to be vaccinating people than shutting down the whole of society. “
So what was it then, a case of “no idea whether lockdown will work or not, but it might blackmail the population into getting vaccinated”???

ShropshireLass
ShropshireLass
5 years ago

Michael Curzon – I disagree – this article is NOT worth reading in full – and why on earth are you including this article on here without a critique that it richly deserves. Unimpressed.

JohnnyDollar
JohnnyDollar
5 years ago

Haven’t the BRITISH had enough of this Snake? the evil man?

Jules
Jules
5 years ago

What the hell has this idiot got that he can be a totally incompetent scientist, and a laughing stock all over the world, and still get listened to by government and media? Seriously, is this the best we can do?

Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
5 years ago
Reply to  Jules

Gates money pays Imperial tens of millions a year & so as long as Ferguson doesn’t murder anyone, his chair is safe.

ShropshireLass
ShropshireLass
5 years ago
Reply to  Mike Yeadon

But surely he has, in effect murdered people – indirectly?

Milo
Milo
5 years ago
Reply to  ShropshireLass

You read my mind Shropshire Lass – all those people who were harmed by the fearmongering and took their own lives because they could no longer bear it and the people who died because they didn’t receive medical treatment and the people who have been harmed by the vaccinations they received, created and deemed necessary to survival because his modelling predicted this virus would be so deadly, and all the children yet to be harmed by the vaccine because they will be forced to have it likely to continue to attend school and sure as eggs is eggs it will harm them. It could be alleged that he is indirectly responsible for a lot of deaths.

sskinner
sskinner
5 years ago

I don’t care what Mr Fergusson ‘thinks’.

George Morris
George Morris
5 years ago

Having risen at a civilised hour I am a bit behind the rest of you in this. I find my morning sceptic binge is adorned by a picture of none other than Neil Ferguson. I also find that George Galloway is standing for the Scottish Parliament in my local ‘Region’. What is going on? Are we to expect the return of Selwyn Gummer? Look how pale Prof Ferguson is – he has obviously not been out for months (except at night). Something more serious: Moray is having quite a significant spike at the moment. It is rumoured that the kids in the local school have found a way of testing positive so as to avoid their school ‘assessments’. Has anyone else heard this?

Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
5 years ago
Reply to  George Morris

My issue is that I no longer believe by default anything the authorities tell us, because their track record id appalling.

What is meant by spike? How has testing changed? Are you certain they’ve not altered PCR testing conditions? How?

Sandra Barwick
Sandra Barwick
5 years ago

He’s wonderfully predictable, isn’t he?
I don’t even need to model to know what he will say.
A little holiday courtesy of me, but don’t forget I’m still in charge. Never normal again.
Then a scariant will require top up vaccination for all. Be coerced, be very coerced.
Soon we will have full authorisation for ze vaccines.
Then we will make you all follow orders.
Massive profits for rna vaccines.
Absolute control.

Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
5 years ago
Reply to  Sandra Barwick

Yes. What they’ll do with this totalitarian control is unknown but the facts best fit use of it to kill a substantial chunk of the population of the world.

watersider
watersider
5 years ago

What really worries me is when this onanist forecasts something (anything) it is 100% wrong.
Therefore if he says “things will get better” that worries me.
But when this is all over a job awaits him in Global Warming forecasting as they have a 100% record of failed catastrophy.

DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
5 years ago

Can we PLEASE ensure that the tosser Ferguson is NOT referred to as an “epidemiologist”, as in this article ATL, or as an “expert on infectious diseases” as on the BBC. He’s a physicist, with 2 degrees in the subject, which makes him as far removed, scientifically, from an epidemiologist as possible.
He’s an arrogant wanker, a legend in his own lunchtime, whose mathematical models; the cause of Government hysteria and panic, have been and continue to be wildly inaccurate in their forecasts of death.

tom171uk
tom171uk
5 years ago

Why are we still giving this discredited narcissist the oygen of publicity?

SweetBabyCheeses
SweetBabyCheeses
5 years ago

He must be really missing all that shagging around he was doing outside of his marriage. Bet he can’t wait to get back to “normal”.

ShropshireLass
ShropshireLass
5 years ago

Since he is a supporter of the CCP he doesn’t want us to get back to normal. Neither does the main funder of his department and institution.

cubby
cubby
5 years ago

Hilarious (or disturbing?) start to the quoted article. “Sobering death toll prediction” should read “Hysterical death toll prediction”. What is the point of Michael Curzon’s uncritical reproduction of government propaganda on LS? This reminds me why I stopped reading almost all LS articles a couple of months ago and stopped donating last year. Only the picture of the cunt at the top of the article made me, unfortunately, read it, wondering why anybody is still taking him seriously. Spoiled my day.

Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
5 years ago
Reply to  cubby

Same here. They will not call liars, liars. So it’s pointless.
The public doesn’t understand that we’re not in debatable uncertainty.
It’s flat out lies. No one but me who is known a little is telling them this.

Jabba the Hut
Jabba the Hut
5 years ago

Neil Ferguson couldn’t model a turd out of brown plasticine.

chaos
chaos
5 years ago

40% of Imperial’s total income comes from China. Chinese research contracts, Chinese students.. then there’s the other chunks of cash from people like Gates.

He who pays the piper plays the tune.

CovidiousAlbion
CovidiousAlbion
5 years ago

“much better to be vaccinating people than shutting down the whole of society” – The false binary that’s been at the heart of the whole scam.

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Algie
Algie
5 years ago

I am convinced this man should undergo a psychological assessment. He seems to be suffering something similar to Munchausen by proxy, although not all his victims have been human. Attention seeking and catastrophising behaviours should not be rewarded with power.

paul smith
paul smith
5 years ago

Consider how “accurate” his other “predictions” have been over the years.
Yeah.
…anybody need a grain of salt?

huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
5 years ago

According to an Israeli People’s Report the Pfizer jab has had a “catastrophic effect on every system in the human body.”

I am sorry but I don’t know how to post a link.

Noumenon
Noumenon
5 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Copy and paste?

Major Panic in the jabby jabbys
Major Panic in the jabby jabbys
5 years ago

why is this fraudster/charlatan still able to cause extraordinary harm to this country and peoples lives – he, his accomplices and his handlers are due a reckoning

Squire Western
Squire Western
5 years ago

That damned Ferguson looks like some lovesick poet. He ought to be worried for his safety in my opinion.

Will
Will
5 years ago
Reply to  Squire Western

I have thought for a while that he will be Doctor Kellyed when he becomes surplus to requirements.

Squire Western
Squire Western
5 years ago
Reply to  Will

No need for that – what about a bankrupt business owner, or someone who, after being fobbed off for months by the National Covid Service, finally is seen by a doctor and told that he has a now inoperable cancer?

Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
5 years ago
Reply to  Squire Western

I’m a man of peace but in his case & a few others, is stop & applaud if he was being lynched.
It’d be far too merciful a punishment.
He deserves life in prison & in solitary confinement.
Forced to watch videos made by people who worked out he was lying right from the beginning.
Ferguson is one of the most pivotal actors in getting this global event up & running.
Gates funded Chair at Imperial, essentially.

crazypaving
crazypaving
5 years ago

So back to normal is masks to walk around in a restaurant or pub, but not to sit at a table, based on this clearly no walking and mixing like it was in the normal days. Going to a gig will involve a test before and after, sport events suggesting tests before and after according to someone from the Premier League who todays says they support covid passports but the cost will have to fall on the state or individual (so we will have to pay for more tests to be allowed to do things we used to do), tests at our own expense to go to the airport and tests at our own expense when we come back from our holidays. Basically everything we do enjoy life is will need a test to do at our own expense or will be restricted by regulations that strangle any element of spontaneity or fun.

How does a night out work. Back in my going out days we’d do 3 or 4 bars, mixing with other humans and having fun. Clearly young people are not going to be able to do that and all those bars are doomed as you don’t have… Read more »

HelenaHancart
HelenaHancart
5 years ago
Reply to  crazypaving

He’s not even that academically smart, bit like Gates. One thing for sure they they are so removed from normal life, and so enabled and imbued with power, they wouldn’t know what “normal” life is like, even if it came and punched their bloody lights out. And they don’t care either!

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
5 years ago

Still waiting for a journalist to ask him why his model of nvCJD was ridiculously wrong.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11786878/

“Extending the analysis to consider absolute risk, we estimate the 95% confidence interval for future vCJD mortality to be 50 to 50,000 human deaths considering exposure to bovine BSE alone, with the upper bound increasing to 150,000 once we include exposure from the worst-case ovine BSE scenario examined.”

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/vcjd/facts

As usual it’s a case of test more find “more”

realarthurdent
realarthurdent
5 years ago

He would say it was right because the outcome was within the range he predicted (albeit very close to the bottom end)

The problem is that the range of the prediction was so wide, his model was essentially useless as a decision-making tool. Much like his models of COVID-19 mortality.

He would also probably say that his model predictions were taken out of context by the media. That might have been a valid excuse the first time he produced a model, but he’s been at this job, advising government, for how long? He should know by now that any number he produces will be taken out of context by the media.

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

He might well have said 100% confidence 0 to 70 million…
the “middle” of his 95% confidence implies 25,000 or 75,000…
So he was out by a factor of 1000 (when you realise we found more CJD because we looked more).

CovidiousAlbion
CovidiousAlbion
5 years ago

If the spike protein-inducing experimental injections can trigger prion formation (as has been suggested), his model may yet be well borne out. I bet he loves it, when a plan comes together.

realarthurdent
realarthurdent
5 years ago

Why is anyone still paying attention to him? The man who was delighted that SAGE could “get away with” implementing the kind of draconian lockdown policies seen in China. The man whose models, not just on COVID but on previous viruses, have consistently turned out to be wildly pessimistic. The man who never considers empirical data when trying to predict the future. The man who broke his own lockdown rules. The man who has no qualifications in epidemiology, virology or immunology but is supposedly the Government’s “go to” expert on a viral epidemic.

Why? Why hasn’t he been sent off to academia’s equivalent of a desk job in the UK Consulate in Bhutan or Quito?

Be gone with you, Professor.

eastender53
eastender53
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

100% agree. ATL says ‘SAGE’ member. I thought he ‘resigned’ after he got caught in flagrante delecti?

ArtC
ArtC
5 years ago
Reply to  eastender53

Isn’t that in Portugal?

ShropshireLass
ShropshireLass
5 years ago
Reply to  eastender53

Officially resigned from the main SAGE group, but quietly joined two other linked advisory groups, including NERVTAG, which feed into the main SAGE group. So, in effect the story of his resignation was a smokescreen. Don’t forget he has fellow supporters on SAGE and in the cabinet, plus his paymaster is also both directly and indirectly influencing key cabinet members through the WEF of which they are all partner members and also the new Pandemic Preparedness Partnership, so he is useful to too many key players – and he knows it.

Annie
Annie
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

I disagree with you on one point.
This is not a man. It’s a scrawny little demon from a forgotten corner of hell.

Milo
Milo
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

So well put realarthurdent, although I’d say that a desk job in the UK Consulate in Bhutan or Quito is too good for him.

MikeAustin
MikeAustin
5 years ago

Let’s return to normal and purify the air by burning sage.

Hopeless
Hopeless
5 years ago
Reply to  MikeAustin

I prefer a good Wicker Man (or even two or more) myself, as it has plenty of room for all of them. The Summer Solstice could be even more relevant and pivotal as the right day for the match to be applied.

HelenaHancart
HelenaHancart
5 years ago
Reply to  MikeAustin

I see what you did there!

dnrobson
dnrobson
5 years ago

Contrary to Lockdown Skeptics opinion I do not think that Professor Ferguson’s opinions are worth reading in full. Has Lockdown Skeptics now become like the MSM, a mete mouthpiece for such scaremongers?

Old Maid
Old Maid
5 years ago
Reply to  dnrobson

I have wondered about all the ‘worth reading full’ (when they are clearly not) and links, and wondered if LS is paid for them?

Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
5 years ago
Reply to  dnrobson

I must say, Toby & co have shied away from telling the real truth, which I’ve communicated to them a number of times.

I admire what he’s done. But like Dr John Lee & talkRADIO, Lockdown Sceptics has completely let down their audiences.

How? They’re simply not telling you what is already apparent. And it’s unfortunately the deductions I’ve made.

I wish I was wrong. I’d happily drop dead if it would make me wrong.

ShropshireLass
ShropshireLass
5 years ago
Reply to  Mike Yeadon

Just checking – presumably you are not the real Mike Yeadon who most (if not all) of us have admired as a principled scientist who has bravely held his head above the parapet consistently throughout this mess? But you are actually someone who has ‘borrowed‘ the name for the purpose of commenting on here?

swedenborg
swedenborg
5 years ago
Reply to  ShropshireLass

Agree.Serious doubts that this is genuine.Never going into scientific reasons for his doubts about vaccine but instead general rantings about mass murder This is too crude.Some one is impersonating him.

Tillysmum
Tillysmum
5 years ago
Reply to  ShropshireLass

Mike Yeadon has great integrity. You can see that from his posts.

karenovirus
karenovirus
5 years ago

“He (ferguson) suggested vaccination should replace the need for lockdowns”.

Such a diametrically opposite view to that stated by the Prime Minister just a couple of weeks ago would normally lead to instant dismissal.

Annie
Annie
5 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

Of which one?
Neither knows what he’s talking about anyway.

jos
jos
5 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

The contradictions are part of the deliberate chaos and confusion- nothing happening now is coincidental. It’s all been meticulously planned except maybe for the plummeting of the fatalities from the virus.

FarligGods
FarligGods
5 years ago
Reply to  jos

Don’t worry, the death rates will skyrocket again in Autumn amongst particularly the “vaccinated”, it´ll be interesting to hear what their narrative is then – convid 21??

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