In one of the more bizarre moments at the Covid Inquiry so far, Professor Neil Ferguson, the architect of Britain’s lockdown, today denied ever calling for the first national stay-at-home order – in the latest instance of lockdown backpedalling. The Mail has more.
Professor Neil Ferguson’s terrifying March 2020 models warned that 500,000 Brits would die unless tougher action was taken to curb the virus’s spread.
It spooked Boris Johnson into adopting draconian restrictions that saw the country told they “must stay at home”. Vaccines — considered the only safe route out of the pandemic — were still months away from being deployed.
But Professor Ferguson, who quit his role as a SAGE adviser two months after being caught breaking social distancing rules to meet his married lover, today insisted he didn’t tell officials to plunge the country into a lockdown.
He told the U.K. COVID-19 Inquiry that the situation was “a lot more complex”.
The inquiry is in its second module, which is examining core U.K. decision-making and political governance.
Hugo Keith KC asked: “Do you feel that you did confine yourself to the provision of scientific advice, or did you become, despite your best endeavours, irrevocably involved in determination of policy?”
Imperial College London’s Professor Ferguson, nicknamed ‘Professor Lockdown’ for his infamous modelling, said it was a “difficult question to answer”.
He said: “I know I’m associated very much with a particular policy.
“But as you’ll be aware from the evidence I’ve given in my statement and statements of evidence, the reality was a lot more complex.
“I don’t think I stepped over that line to say ‘we need to do this now’.
“What I tried to do was at times, which was stepping outside the scientific advisory role, to try and focus people’s minds on what was going to happen and the consequences of current trends.”
The epidemiologist drew heavy flak for his team’s modelling on the Covid pandemic.
Their work suggested 500,000 Brits would die if nothing was done to stop the spread of the virus and there would be 250,000 deaths if two-thirds caught Covid.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Ross Clark in the Spectator says that perhaps the most remarkable revelation from Professor Ferguson’s inquiry evidence is that “he spoke to and emailed Ben Warner at No. 10 on March 13th, three days before the Imperial paper [Report 9] was published”. Warner was a data scientist brought into Downing Street by Dominic Cummings and whom Cummings later credited for inducing pandemic alarm in No. 10, so Ferguson contacting him directly beforehand is significant.
However, Clark notes that in his email to Warner, “Ferguson then stopped short of damning the Government’s policy of mitigation rather than suppression. In fact, if the Government decided to continue with mitigation, he wrote, ‘there is a rational basis to that decision which I would say the science supports’. However, he added, the Government should make it clear how many people were likely to die. Intriguingly, Ferguson then went on to write: ‘This event is in the natural disaster category and the cure (e.g. massive social distancing, shutdowns) could be worse than the disease.’ In other words, he had at least considered the possibility that lockdowns could cause more damage than they were worth – but neither he nor anyone else seems to have tried to model this.”
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What planet is pantsdown on?
Speaking at the Science and Technology Committee, Professor Ferguson said: “The epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced. So had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half.”
10 June 2020
Good research.
It’s the planet where Science is, essentially, just computer modelling. Put your non evidence based assumptions in and the computer does the rest. No need for hypotheses, or any of that kind of nonsense, on that planet.
On our planet this kind of prediction is probably more akin to astrology, than what we generally have called science for the past 300 years.
Every epidemiologist knows that epidemics follow Gompertz curves. It might be steep in growth, but it is NOT expoential.
Indeed.
Epidemics do not follow Gompertz curves, if I remember correctly that models life expectancy. Nothing natural grows exponentially because that implies infinite resource. The growth of the standard SIR model corresponds to what would be exponential growth were it not multiplied by the expected value of a logit-normal distribution.
Four days before the first lockdown PHE data showed that the cases had already deviated sufficiently from the initial exponential that an estimate could be made of the final cumulative cases, by fitting a Normal Distribution Model, giving figures limited to around 100,000. After a few more weeks of the first wave the asymmetry of the Gompertz Curve could be estimated, giving an updated figure of around 200,000, because of the long tail of the Gompertz Curve. However, all this modelling was disrupted by factors such as changes in the counting criteria, notably the “from”/”with” debate and the messing around with PCR cycle thresholds. By the time of the second wave the whole thing was a political, psyops and epidemiological mess, resistant to simplistic modelling of virus and human behaviour.
Yes. The “curve” was already flattening. Lockdown happened because that yellowbelly Johnson panicked.
When the medical establishment – meaning our wonderful NHS doctors were killing people with ventilators in 2020 the mortality from
covidventilators was 6% of hospitalised cases.After August 2020 the mortality rate dropped to 1% indicating it was not covid killing the hospitalised cases prior to that time.
And of course 6% stoked the flames.
Also, 1% was way lower than the figures we were being given daily of the covid deaths occurring within 28 days of a positive test.
They also know that you CANNOT stop an RSV completing its natural course. All lockdown did (apart from inflicting carnage on society, the economy and politics) was delay the end.
As NZ showed clearly.
Thank you. You finally prompted me to write to the Covid enquiry.
contact@covid19.public-inquiry.uk
“What I tried to do was at times, which was stepping outside the scientific advisory role, to try and
focus people’s minds on what was going to happen and the consequences of current trendsscare people into lockdowns with my silly models.” I think that’s more accurate.Words fail me. It really is like 1984 where they deny their own words a year or so after speaking them. Hats off to all of you who said this would happen.
It’s extremely Orwellian.
He’s doing a Dr Fauci!
This man has done untold damage to billions of lives with his pseudo science and what if any consequences has he faced? If you can’t see the system is rigged you never will.
Ten years from now, NO ONE will admit that they ever supported any flavor of lockdowns. Just like it’s extremely hard to impossible to find anyone today who admits to having ever supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
I suspect that support of the covid injections will also be denied….
This landed in the EU Parliament a couple of days ago. Nothing over here about it, but then we’re being diverted by Israeli & Palestinian squirrels….
https://www.facebook.com/100090100260048/posts/pfbid027A8stAEmNNZaFgbcyKvsn7XETfgPJfJU5rXuUNNEjtYEqz61fFcGd7RiugyWgVY7l/?sfnsn=scwspmo
I do recall that back then in his “study” that was used to justify lockdowns, he had a sleight of mouth where he advocated “very strict social distancing” as distinguished from “lockdown” in that in the latter, no one is allowed to go to work at all (like Wuhan). Classic motte-and-bailey argument, basically. Just like when other lockdown zealots disingenuously claim that we never had a Real Lockdown (TM). Natch.
They claim we never had a Real Lockdown, but at the same time they claim that the Real Lockdown worked and we must do it again next time.
Well he certainly seems proud of it here
https://unherd.com/thepost/neil-ferguson-interview-china-changed-what-was-possible/
Yep.
His China and Italy rave came to my mind immediately.
The original drivel:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/people-don-t-agree-with-lockdown-and-try-to-undermine-the-scientists-gnms7mp
98
Professor Ferguson added: “I think clearly the biggest mistake was the time taken to lock down.”
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/neil-ferguson-delay-lockdown-uks-biggest-pandemic-mistake
I suggest that had there been a delay of a few more days before the first lockdown then the data would clearly have shown a low bound to ultimate numbers, rather than the government -media hysteria over a million dead and Hyde Park being a mortuary. Perhaps Carrie bullied Boris???
How do we, the people that these policies affected most, go about ensuring accountability for this whole lockdown debacle.
If only I knew, I’d devote the rest of my life to the cause because one things for sure, it won’t come from this so called Covid Inquiry.
There must be some legal standing for those who’s businesses and livelihoods were ruined.. Is that the pathway..
Our Courts are as corrupt as the rest of our institutions.
Agreed
Yup Simon Dolan tried to legally challenge Lockdown in the Supreme Court and it got rejected twice!
I’d be interested to hear on what grounds exactly
Someone once said ‘advisors advise, ministers decide’. But it feels like his role was much more than advisory.
These academics manipulate politicians into making choices the politicians would otherwise avoid and can claim they don’t decide the policy. All the control and experimentation, none of the accountability.
More fool the politicians who can’t smell the rat in the room.
They have perfect senses of smell.
There are too many of them keeping quiet and doing nothing to prove that is true.
How come they don’t do their job of representing their electors, their constituents?
How can it be that this man has survived so many health challenges in which his claimed expertise has been used to make policy and who has been wrong every time , is still given credibility ? He was wrong about BSE , wrong about Foot and Mouth and was wrong about Covid 19 . This defines the Administration of Health in Britain and it is truly corrupted !
The OBE suggests he does what is required.
…and bird flu, and swine flu. I remember Derek Winton’s scathing piece in our very own Daily Sceptic from Feb 2021:
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/02/18/the-imperial-model-and-its-role-in-the-uks-pandemic-response/
Well remembered, thank you. Derek Winton should have been giving this evidence to the inquiry, not Pantsdown, who’s only a legend in his own lunchbox. But as the inquiry is only a whitewash, maybe not.
Reward for failure. Core to the public sector. Remember Cynthia Bowers? At the heart of the Mid-Staffs Morgue scandal? Sacked? No – move on to the Care Quality Commission to carry on harming people.
He didn’t force anybody to do anything, he just suppled the results he was asked for.
He isn’t even a secondary villain.
Looks like Fauci was let into the CIA headquarters without signing in. Check out 17:50
https://rumble.com/v3pp7bs-this-is-bad-theyre-at-it-again.html
He is a liar, we all know he is a liar, his behaviour and his acitions and words recorded and captured on the Internet, so let him be recognised and treated as such. Noone not even his closest friends and relatives will believe or trust a word that comes out of his twisted lips.
Multi levels of corruption oozing through every sentence of Paula Jardine’s excellent investigation in to the C1984 “vaccine” authorisations.
Killers the lot of them.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-uk-government-advisers-helped-pfizer-win-5-95billion-us-covid-vaccine-contract-part-2/
This week in the inquiry is proving very entertaining.
Sir Patrick Vallance’s team worrying about his human rights as his diaries are now in the public domain….human rights???
Mark Woolhouse: lockdowns were a big mistake…if only they had allowed debate and not censored.
Ferguson: I never wanted them to lock us down…just helped them along a bit in their thinking..
Tomorrow will be fun. Carl Henegan! Can’t wait. Hope he wipes the floor with them!
Here’s an extract from an email I sent to Neil Ferguson on 23 March 2021:
Seriously…Ferguson’s report enabled a manufactured global catastrophe – how could this happen?!?!?
“how could this happen?!?!?”
Easy – that’s what they wanted.
There is a very simple argument against lockdown. You CANNOT stop an RSV completing its natural course. Ergo, lockdown simply delays the virus doing what it has to do. And NZ showed this clearly.
What we all need to know is – who are the “theys” and how many and how many tiers of the “they” are there?
Who was the tip of the spear – people like Ferguson, Ian Vallance, Bojo and that picture was repeated in nearly every government worldwide – how was that done?
Who was holding the spear?
Who was nudging the spear holder forward?
Who was paying the nudger(s) to do the nudging?
All questions the Hallett inquiry will never get anywhere near IMHO, being busy covering it all over until next time.
And of course next time looks like happening way before Hallett is even halfway applying the whitewash.
Dr David Robberts European Parliament speech that went viral is a must see into the mechanisms of big pharma and the plandemic.
Please God – put me in a ring with this guy. No gloves.
I read the “science” Professor Pants Down relied on for his ‘modelling’ within a day of his claims hitting the newsstands.
It was clearly crap. It included for example projections from figures from populations in China which had completely different living conditions and standards compared to the UK and which were published on draft unreviewed pre-prints.
And we have the science to know that modelling does not and cannot work – ever. I will not explain it all again but it suffices to say that Professor Philip Tetlock’s 20 years of research proved that forecasts by experts are less reliable than forecasts by dart-throwing chimpanzees.
And complexity science proves that modelling cannot work because generally there are too many variables to predict and forecasts rapidly become unreliable the further beyond the ‘prediction horizon’ the ‘experts’ try to go.
But more especially what you need to be aware of is that the legacy media only relied on and continually quoted what Johns Hopkins and Ferguson’s group at Imperial College pronounced.
Both institutions were and probably remain beneficiaries for example of the Bill Gates’ Foundation’s largesse.
Bearing in mind how many other learned institutions there are worldwide it beggars belief that only those two institutions were the ones repeatedly quoted in the legacy media.
There is a lesson there for us all about who is behind what the media publishes to mislead us all.
Ferguson is the archetypal geek, exactly the type Churchill had in mind when he shuddered at the thought of experts on top rather than on tap. I don’t know why more wasn’t made at the time of the fact that Ferguson’s ridiculous lash-up program produced different forecasts when run multiple times on the same platform. Even so, he has been unjustly maligned. We can see from the record that it wasn’t him pushing fanatically for lockdown. Nor was it Whitty and Vallance. The record shows the impetus came from the public sector unions. Up to the 10-Mar-2020 the government was pursuing a sensible herd immunity policy. On that day, medical GMB members threatened mutiny, citing inadequate PPE for NHS workers. Other unions waded in. The RMT threatened a rail strike, UCU threatened university closures, saying the government was ignoring the coronavirus threat. The NEU waved the threat of national withdrawal of labour in schools. Faced with a multiple mutiny of public-sector unions, Boris and Co began frantically spinning and seeking for pretexts on which to abandon herd immunity. At the 16-Mar-20 press conference, Ferguson’s preposterous forecasts were wheeled out. On 18-Mar-20, Boris caved in to NEU strike threats by agreeing schools would close. This was the decisive step. Parents cannot go to work if their kids are off school.
allanplaskett
“Even so, he has been unjustly maligned. We can see from the record that it wasn’t him pushing fanatically for lockdown.”
Nonsense. He and his team knew exactly what they were doing. It would take a moron not to know what the outcome would be. And on top of that he and his team made sure they hit the headlines immediately to cause panic.
The responsible thing to do would have been to subject their
“modelling”meddling muddling to calm review and critical scrutiny of responsible knowledgeable professionals.And as I have already written here:
How can that happen?
It is a far more sophisticated version of the JFK assassination when the ready-made fake news cover story defying the laws of physics was spread worldwide JFK was killed by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald shooting from the Dallas Book Depository with a bolt action rifle.
And they did not care then that this legend was full of holes because it was believed for long enough to cover over the traces and it is still believed today.
Today it is known exactly how many shooters there were, where they shot from and even what their names are.
And don’t forget the 9/11 smoking gun of the impossible collapse of building 7. Building 7 which was hit by nothing and collapsed onto its own footprint exactly like a controlled demolition.
And that is all supposed to be conspiracy theory.
You feel strongly but need to check the record of what actually happened. A good summary is contained in Dr Ben Irvine’s Long Read essay, Lockdown Sceptics, 06-Jan-22.
“You … but need to check the record of what actually happened”
Which of three events I discuss are you referring to?
allanplaskett
“Ferguson is the archetypal geek”
I disagree. There is too much evidence of coordination.
And as I have already written here:
To be fair (and I’m no fan of Fergoid) I think “they” were going to lock down regardless of what his model said – too much pressure from all sides – but for him to claim that he had no personal influence on policy is bollox.
““they” were going to lock down regardless of what his model said”
100% agree except that Professor Pants Down’s ‘muddle’ was used as the catalyst in a very irresponsible way.
Sir Ian Vallance first pronouncements were we we going to go all out Sweden and then he turned on a sixpence – spun around 180 and went to go all out lockdown all in a matter of hours.
He was clearly off-script and he was pulled back onto it.
Who exactly behind the scenes had the clout to get such an obvious volte face from a man in his prominent public position?
There is a lot we will never know and IMHO Hallett’s “
inquiry” cover up will make sure of that.Yes, the model provided a very convenient “excuse” to lock down. Whether it was just lucky that it appeared at the right time, or somebody ensured it would appear at the right time…like you say we will probably never know.
His notorious quote along the lines of “We couldn’t get away with it” as already reproduced by RTSC above does strongly imply that he played a significant part in the decision making, certainly enough to feel he was part of the team, unless of course he’s just trying to make out he was more important than he actually was, which is always possible.
If you apply the two questions which all half decent investigators do you will have enough evidence to put up a decent argument that we already have enough to know:
1) what is the normal thing for someone to do in these circumstances/the normal thing to happen in these circumstances
2) what is the obvious thing for someone to do in normal circumstances/to happen in normal circumstances.
So on that basis this is the one kind of modelling which can work – as it is not predicting the future but a past of what ought to have happened to compare it to what did happen.
It takes a lot of thought and is best done out loud with a team of people but it works.
Some things you just can’t hide and this situation is no different.
Don’t forget the WHO where they changed the definition of a pandemic, so they could, i assume, usher in the Lockdowns ready for the saviour ‘vaccine’.
Neil Ferguson “It’s a communist one party state (China), we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.”
Pants on Fire Ferguson.
PS. His statement is in denial of the FACT that the Government reduced Covid to a Low Consequence Infectious Disease about 5 days BEFORE the first lockdown.
The reason …. because they knew it had low mortality rates!
They had already decided to destroy the economy and millions of lives.
And if they kept it at HCID they would have to use any available treatment going, like HQC. I think the Orange Man Bad regarding HQC was just an excuse to cover for the real reason they lowered it, for big pharma.
This is not “lockdowns back pedalling”.
A quick Internet search reveals that Ferguson was simply lying to the enquiry:
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/professor-neil-ferguson-lockdown-scientist-measures-cases-679778
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/coronavirus-lockdown-extended-neil-ferguson-action-needed-a4415971.html
Neil Ferguson, 2020: ‘I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March. When SAGE observed the “innovative intervention” out of China, of locking entire communities down and not permitting them to leave their homes, they initially presumed it would not be an available option in a liberal Western democracy: it’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.’