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When Will Neil Ferguson Admit He Got it Wrong?

by Toby Young
25 August 2021 6:04 PM

We’re publishing another critique today, this one by Glen Bishop, of the new paper in Nature by Neil Ferguson and others claiming that a lockdown in Sweden would have resulted in a two- to four- fold reduction in mortality. Hard to credit they’re still banging this drum, given that Ferguson’s team originally predicted the absence of a lockdown in Sweden would have resulted in up to 90,000 deaths by July 2020. The real number was 5370. When will Ferguson admit he simply got it wrong?

In the latest episode of the Imperial modelling saga, Imperial have dusted off old modelling techniques and cherry picked the time scale and countries in a study to try to disparage the Swedish success, the Achilles heel of the lockdown lobby. In the paper published in Nature, Imperial propose a counterfactual model, whereby the Danish, Swedish and British responses to coronavirus are transposed to the other two countries respectively, to compare the effectiveness of each approach in reducing covid mortality when accounting for the heterogeneities between the countries.

Imperial’s team models the respective change in R value through the first months of the pandemic using the death data from each country. Interestingly, it implies that the R0 value of the virus in March 2020 in the U.K. was around 4.5, far higher than previous estimates of 2.5 to 3. These changes in the R-value are then applied to the other countries. The problem is that the Imperial team then retrospectively model the pandemic for each hypothetical scenario using the same flawed modelling techniques which have consistently been wildly inaccurate. Despite Professor Ferguson misleading Matt Ridley at a select committee hearing to suggest Imperial had not produced estimates for Sweden, his Imperial team had in fact predicted between 30,000 and 42,000 deaths in Sweden with social distancing lockdowns and up to 90,000 deaths by July 2020 if the pandemic was left unmitigated. By July 2020 the actual figure was 5370, an order of magnitude below Imperial’s predictions.

The logic to supporting the lockdowns has thus become cyclical, relying on the modelling that influenced lockdown policies in the first place, with Imperial inevitably concluding the following: “Sweden adopting U.K. policies would have resulted in a two- to four- fold reduction in mortality (Table 1). Had the U.K. adopted Swedish policies, deaths would have increased deaths by a factor of between 1.6 and 4.”

This is naïve and misleading at best. The scenario modelled only runs up to July 2020 and had the U.K. or Sweden suppressed the spread to reduce mortality during that period it would have led to increased mortality in future waves, particularly with the rapidly increasing infectiousness of the variants. Hungary is perhaps the best illustration of this point. It was celebrated last year after suppressing the first wave and experiencing very low mortality, yet went on to have the highest mortality rate in Europe after coronavirus surged the following winter within a population with little natural immunity and at a time when hospitals are under pressure.

The evidence within the paper to support the conclusion – that “small differences in the timing and effectiveness of control strategies have dramatic effects on the resulting numbers of cases and deaths” – relies on the non-existent credibility of the team’s previous attempts to model the pandemic and is easily negated with the reality all over the world. Across the globe, a wide range of interventions have been tried at different times over the past 18 months, with varying levels of severity, but little evidence of an correlation between those variables and different outcomes. We only have to look at the similar outcomes in Peru and Brazil, for example, or Florida and California, to see how different approaches yield the same results in regions with similar populations.

Professor Samir Bhatt, a Professor of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen and a member of the Imperial team that pushed the U.K. into lockdown, even admits: “Many times I would have thought that the situation would have gone a different way, but it worked for Sweden… They achieved infection control; they managed to keep infections relatively low, and they didn’t have any health care collapse.” Yet, as the Telegraph has highlighted, “real benefits of Sweden’s radical policy, however, can be seen in the economy, the psychological impact, and in schools”. The U.K. experienced a 9.8% drop in GDP compared to Sweden’s 2.8%, with Sweden’s economy back at pre-pandemic levels by June 2021 after the fastest economic rebound in Europe. While young people in the U.K. suffered large educational disruption, few Swedish students missed any school.

The paper continues to support lockdowns as if they were a laboratory experiment on rats with no damaging side effects or moral hazards involved. It remains completely blinkered to anything but an obsession with controlling one particular virus, with a reckless disregard for the wider societal consequences of the lockdown policies they advocate. In the ethics declaration on the paper, the Imperial team declare “no competing interests”, yet this is not the case. It is clearly in the interests of the Imperial team to denigrate Sweden’s policy as best they can. If their paper was to conclude anything else, they would have to admit that they have caused enormous damage to society and cost countless excess non-Covid deaths in the UK and around the world because of their advice. It is strongly in the interest of their careers, reputation and standing in society to spin Sweden as a failure in any way they can.

Glen Bishop is a maths student at Nottingham University.

Tags: LockdownsNeil FergusonSweden

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72 Comments
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Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

”Therefore part, or all, of their lower Covid mortality is not the vaccine effect. They are simply healthier people than their unvaccinated counterparts.”

Is this the same author that mentions this ”healthy vaccinee bias” in every single article? I’m not sure if he reads these comments or that I’m just failing to grasp something but I seriously cannot and will not accept that all of the jabbed people are healthier than all of the never-jabbed people. You do not have to look far to find the data ( or that from our own personal experiences, being surrounded by constantly ill jabberwockies! ) which supports this either because it’s basically what the excess deaths are, it’s what the increase in cancers are, it’s the increases in disability and going off sick from work, it’s the increases in sudden deaths and myocarditis in kids/youngsters.

Perhaps somebody needs to explain this to me with the aid of an etch-a-sketch but I totally do not accept the above statement. The only healthy people are the ones that haven’t screwed up their immune systems or who don’t have heart damage because they didn’t get the vax.

Last edited 1 year ago by Mogwai
73
-3
JaneDoeNL
JaneDoeNL
1 year ago

Effectiveness of the 4th dose against death was around zero – so, same as the effectiveness against death of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd dose? Just basing this on what my own eyes observed, an increase in excess death in 2021, excess death 2022 equal to that of 2022.

Now do the effectiveness of any dose of this poison causing death – presumably very far from zero.

It really is effective, we’ve just been looking at what the effect was supposed to be all wrong.

42
0
FerdIII
FerdIII
1 year ago
Reply to  JaneDoeNL

Just waiting for the science to scream about the effectiveness of lobotomies, beheadings and death camps. 100% safely effective. Line up.

18
0
Matt Dalby
Matt Dalby
1 year ago
Reply to  JaneDoeNL

The excess deaths seen since mid 2021 are mainly non covid deaths so don’t tell us anything about vaccine effectiveness. I think there’s been enough analysis of the data by qualified people who are sceptical of the “safe and effective” mantra to show that 2 doses lowered the risk of dying from covid for about 6 months. Given the number of vaccine related deaths and serious long term side effects whether or not it was beneficial to people at higher risk of covid death to be vaccinated is harder to work out. Obviously this doesn’t justify mass vaccination of younger age groups or the lack of information given to people meaning they couldn’t make an informed choice.

4
0
FerdIII
FerdIII
1 year ago

Great analysis, thanks.
Add in the Dead and Injured and we have negative ‘efficacy’.
I don’t remember the propaganda mentioning that.
And, that is just the beginning. ADE is real, and pouring neurotoxins into your body is unlikely to be healthy (see cocaine or rat poison for more info).

40
-1
Jabba the Hut
Jabba the Hut
1 year ago

I’m not sure about the healthy vaccine effect either Mogs. I think a lot of people who care about their health new they were at no risk from covid and looked into the injections and thought not a chance. Also consider how desperate they were to stuff it into everybody starting with the people on deaths door, but they all popped off within the 1st 2 weeks so were considered unvaccinated. I’m guessing people who had an adverse event with their 1st two stopped taking them because they became unhealthy and so on with subsequent boosters so the only people left are the ‘healthy’ because they haven’t had an adverse event (yet). Three hundred thousand more people are claiming disability since the start of the roll out which gives you an idea of the unhealthy vaccine effect.
On a different note, I wonder now Russel Brand is in the process of being cancelled when are sites like the DS and TCW going to be removed from the Internet surely it can’t be long now. At that point will Toby still consider it to be all a cock up. I think the net is starting to tighten.

Last edited 1 year ago by Jabba the Hut
43
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  Jabba the Hut

Well just to generalize things a little more here, talking about all other vaccines here. You’ll remember Dr Paul Thomas in the US, the one who had the peer-reviewed study which showed unvaccinated kids were healthier than vaccinated across the board and that study was retracted. Here he is in a 6min clip of a presentation and what’s interesting is he’s including adults. For example; zero cancer in unvaccinated adults vs their vaxxed counterparts. It’s like the Amish isn’t it? So how does this ‘healthy vaccinee bias’ apply to the Amish then? They’re naturally free of many chronic diseases, things like autism/ADHD don’t apply, are they starting at some disadvantaged position to their vaxxed counterparts? The data do not support that. On the contrary, the data show it’s the vaccinated that have these diseases/disorders just like it’s the vaxxed babies dying of ‘SIDS’. We are the control group and it’s not us filling up the hospitals in winter or dying suddenly decades before our time, and yet…”…they are simply healthier people than their unvaccinated counterparts.” That seems an outright false statement to me and contradicted left, right and centre with actual evidence.

https://odysee.com/@AussieFighter:8/Stunning-Dr.-Paul-Thomas-Blows-Up-The-Conventional-Vaccine-Narrative:2

N.B Here is his website, which I think is clearer when looking at the data and graphs;

https://www.doctorsandscience.com/presentations.html

Last edited 1 year ago by Mogwai
22
0
JohnK
JohnK
1 year ago
Reply to  Jabba the Hut

I’m one of them. At the start of the campaign, I more or less said “no thanks, I’ll wait and see.” As it happened, the more I see, the less I like about it. Incidentally, my local surgery hasn’t bothered me about it, and has not tried any more to flog it to me. Not sure if that’s generally the case.

9
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://www.globalresearch.ca/g20-announces-plan-impose-digital-currencies-ids-worldwide/5832785

16
0
Jabba the Hut
Jabba the Hut
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Absolutely hux’s that is what all this is about a digital prison or digital slavery take your pick. I wonder if Billy boy will pay us reparations.

https://open.substack.com/pub/igorchudov/p/bill-gates-and-the-wef-push-biometrics?r=1omj4z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

15
-1
CHRIS
CHRIS
1 year ago

Roll up, roll up, the NHS is fast tracking your 17th booster this week for a COVID variant with so many mutations and that is so mild that the prick in your arm will have even less benefit – but all of the dangers – of your previous 16 boosters.

33
0

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