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With Neil Ferguson’s Abysmal Record of Failed Predictions, Boris Was Right Not to Trust Him

by Dr Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson
10 December 2023 9:00 AM

We have held the belief that no politician who has not experienced the bestiality of war should ever be elected Prime Minister of any state. Ours is a belief and an aspiration, as those who have been in action are nowadays thin on the ground. Enforcing such a belief would entail restricting democracy: only veterans, front-line media and humanitarian agencies could be elected. 

But this is the power of experience, as one of us has witnessed with his own eyes innocent Muslim villagers being forced at gunpoint to walk a minefield to ‘clear it’ by treading on death.

The mainstream media report Boris’s statements regarding the credibility of “reasonable worst-case scenarios” arising from models. Here is an excerpt of the Telegraph’s account:

The Government was slow to respond to Covid because worst-case scenario modelling for BSE (mad cow disease) and swine flu had turned out to be wrong in the past, Mr. Johnson said.

In the 2009 swine flu pandemic, it was predicted up to 65,000 people might die. However, just 457 people succumbed to the virus. Likewise, only 178 people died from mad cow disease caused by infected beef, despite claims it could kill 136,000.

Asked by the inquiry counsel whether the scares had contributed to the Government’s hesitancy, Mr. Johnson said: “I do remember the BSE scare and I remember the immense destruction that it did to the agricultural sector in this country and the way that all turned out.”

For Boris, the power of experience was at work, too; he is a classics graduate, journalist, writer and former politician; however, as an avid historian, he has a grasp of prior modelling mistakes.  

In 2001, Neil Ferguson and colleagues used modelling to make predictions about control strategies for the foot-and-mouth epidemic in Great Britain:

Hastening the slaughter of animals with suspected infection is predicted to slow the epidemic, but more drastic action, such as ‘ring’ culling or vaccination around infection foci, is necessary for more rapid control. Culling is predicted to be more effective than vaccination.

And what about Ferguson’s 2005 prediction for containing an emerging influenza pandemic in Southeast Asia, which influenced the stockpiling of modestly performing antivirals and helped focus on the only game in town (influenza), ignoring all other pathogens?

We predict that a stockpile of three million courses of antiviral drugs should be sufficient for elimination. Policy effectiveness depends critically on how quickly clinical cases are diagnosed and the speed with which antiviral drugs can be distributed.

These widely exaggerated claims contributed to the 2009 influenza and COVID-19 debacle: The ‘ring containment’ and ‘we must act now’ messages create the illusion of controlling both.

As for swine flu, Ferguson popped up again. Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson revealed the NHS was planning for a ‘worst case scenario’ of 65,000 deaths if the IFR was as high as 0.35% and 19,000 deaths if it was a rate of 0.1%. 

Based on Ferguson’s modelled worst-case estimates, the figures were considered unhelpful in Dame Deirdre Hind’s independent review of the U.K.’s response to the 2009 influenza pandemic. 

With such noble advisers who mocked him in writing, alongside the sublime fortune-telling skills of modellers, is it that surprising that Mr. Johnson did not know what to do? 

He should have sat on his hands until he was sure he was following the evidence, but pressure from media coverage of apocalyptical models, which he had good reason to distrust, was too much.

If we are to jump at every mystery bug, then with the latest fears of China’s ‘mystery’ pneumonia sweeping the world, we’ll be locking down near every year. 

In the 2020 death debacle, there are still a lot of unexplained features, which we will be exploring in future posts – if we are not culled before we get to it.

Prof. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.

Tags: Boris JohnsonCovid InquiryCOVID-19ModellingNeil FergusonPrecautionary PrincipleSwine FluThe Science

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19 Comments
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EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
1 year ago

It is to be noted that when things turn out badly the enior civil servants and quango-ists are nowhere to be seen. Behind the scenes they determine policy but with just sufficient space to enable them to shhuffle away out of view.

I therefore wonder where were these highly paid, overly promoted and self regarding mandarins when Boris needed support in his view of being cautious about forecasts. Where were they when he needed more reasonable input information and advice.

They were busy trying to destroy him, of course.

119
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago

Not interested, sorry!

30
-2
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Dinger64

Nor me. It’s funny how almost every leader in every country also made the same wrong decisions, at the same time.

89
0
AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Almost as if they were working to a script…but no, that can’t be true surely, only a conspiracy theorist would say that…

91
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  AethelredTheReadier

I also immediately take against any article that refers to the former PM as “Boris”, which as Peter Hitchens points out is a stage name designed to make him appear like everyone’s mate. Apparently it’s not even what his friends and family call him.

77
0
DickieA
DickieA
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

His freinds call him “Al”, so he’s known as Al Kemal in our house.

If you check his family background, he is descended from Ali Kemal, who changed his name. From Wiki:

“During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was one of the Central Powers allied with the German Empire, and Kemal’s son and daughter living in England adopted their maternal grandmother’s maiden name of Johnson. His son Osman also began to use his middle name of Wilfred as his first name. (Osman) Wilfred Johnson later married Irene Williams (the daughter of Stanley F. Williams of Bromley, Kent, by his marriage to Marie Luise, Freiin von Pfeffel, born in 1882[20]) and their son Stanley Johnson became an expert on the environment and population studies and a Conservative member of the European Parliament. His son Boris Johnson, Kemal’s great-grandson, became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 24 July 2019.[21]

Last edited 1 year ago by DickieA
17
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  DickieA

Indeed.

“their son Stanley Johnson became an expert on the environment and population studies” Lol….

25
0
Shirespeed
Shirespeed
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

No one ever got fired for doing what everybody else is doing.

11
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Shirespeed

Isn’t that somewhat circular. Why was everybody else doing it?

3
0
AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago

Put a known liar together with a known fantasist and you get a fantastic lie!

63
-2
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago

Regardless of the decision made, why were the Imperial team involved to begin with given their poor track record?

80
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  DHJ

We know they received funding from the BMGF.

47
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago
Reply to  DHJ

Because Gates funded them.

10
0
JayBee
JayBee
1 year ago

I remember Peter Hitchens saying at an FoS event that it is the role of government and the media to keep a cool head and calm the people during a crisis or panic and not to fan it even further.
Boris failed big time.
He also succumbed to Ferguson’s BS- just 2 days later than the other m*r*ns.
His hunch and comp with BSE was valid and proven right with Covid as well: just 6500 out of 135000 official Covid deaths in England had just COVID as the sole cause on their death certificate.
And that low figure was overblown due to the ridiculous 28day rule and the flawed tests.
And he and everyone else c/should have know that by 18.3.23 already:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says

54
0
Sontol
Sontol
1 year ago

Computer modelling is an excellent tool for purely material and deterministic processes (eg physics, chemistry, engineering, electronics etc), entirely useless for anything that involves at least some element of human behaviour (such as the speed, extent and harmfulness of viral spread); for the simple reason that we have free will and therefore cannot be assessed in a predictive manner.

And yes that does also render all the human (pseudo) sciences such as sociology, psychology and economics redundant.

Another way of putting the same thing – using computer modelling to predict future social outcomes should be seen in the same light as ancient methods such as augury, divination and astrology.

As Professor Ferguson’s wildly inaccurate and massively harmful track record in the field vividly demonstrates.

63
-2
Hester
Hester
1 year ago

Everyone with half a brain cell knew of Fergusons atrocious record In forecasting, if he were any good private enterprise would have employed him and paid millions years ago. They all saw what we did.
Ferguson should have been sacked after the ruin he inflicted on farmers.
That Johnson and his ilk now try to say they didn’t trust Ferguson, they still went ahead and followed his fantasy projections, none of them called him out.
It’s too late now to be sorry, and if it happened again they would use this con artist again.
There is no forgiveness.

85
0
DickieA
DickieA
1 year ago

“Based on Ferguson’s modelled worst-case estimates, the figures were considered unhelpful in Dame Deirdre Hind’s independent review of the U.K.’s response to the 2009 influenza pandemic.”

No doubt the politicians and bureaucrats at the time were spouting “lessons will be learned”. What a meaningless and  vacuous platitude that phrase is.

34
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  DickieA

They did learn lessons after the Swine Flu scam, they were better prepared and got at the media and Universities unlike before. And they were ready to trash the reputation of Wolfgang Wodark making the usual ad hominem attacks.

30
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago

Since we now know:

* Covid was a bio-weapon developed in China with CIA money channelled through Eco Health Alliance

* the gene therapy which was meant to be the antidote required extensive human testing

* all the NATO countries and the Five Eyes locked down at more or less the same time (noticeable that Sweden was then outside NATO) and kept going until the mass medical experiment had been conducted

it seems pretty obvious to me that Johnson was ordered to lock down, almost certainly by the CIA.

Only five days BEFORE the first lockdown Johnson’s Government, on the advice of public health bureaucrats/scientists, downgraded Covid to a Low Consequence Infectious Disease because they knew it had low mortality rates.

Ferguson’s model was created to JUSTIFY the lockdown, not to cause it.

17
0

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