Neil Ferguson

The Figures Don’t Match Up To the Fear, a Doctor Writes

There follows a guest post from our in-house doctor, formerly a senior medic in the NHS, who says the widely trailed tsunami of hospitalisations has not only failed to arrive after ‘Freedom Day’, but we seem to be on the downslope of the ‘third wave’.

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once remarked: “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.” I have been reflecting on that comment, now we are three weeks since the inappropriately named July 19th ‘Freedom Day’. Readers will remember the cacophony of shrieking from assorted ‘health experts’ prophesying certain doom and a tidal wave of acute Covid admissions that would overwhelm our beleaguered NHS within a fortnight. Representatives from the World Health Organisation described the approach as “epidemiologically stupid”. A letter signed by 1,200 self-defined experts was published in the Lancet predicting imminent catastrophe.

Accordingly, this week I thought I should take a look at how the apocalypse is developing and then make some general observations on the centrality of trust and honesty in medical matters.

Let’s start with daily admissions to hospitals from the community in Graph One. Daily totals on the blue bars, seven-day rolling average on the orange line. Surprisingly the numbers are lower than on July 19th. How can that be?

Perhaps there are more patients stacking up in hospitals – sicker patients tend to stay longer and are hard to discharge, so the overall numbers can build up rather quickly. So, Graph Two shows Covid inpatients up to August 5th. Readers should note that Graph Two includes patients suffering from acute Covid (about 75% of the total) plus patients in hospital for non-Covid related illness, but testing positive for Covid (the remaining 25%). How strange – numbers seem to be falling, not rising. This does not fit with the hypothesis – what might explain this anomalous finding?

Maybe the numbers of patients in ICU might be on the increase – after all, both the Beta variant and the Delta variant were said to be both more transmissible and more deadly than the Alpha variant. Graph Three shows patients in ICU in English Hospitals up to August 5th. It shows a similar pattern to Graph Two – a small fall in overall patient numbers in the last two weeks. I looked into the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre ICU audit report up to July 30th. This confirms the overall impression from the top line figures. Older patients do not seem to be getting ill with Covid. Over half the admissions to ICU with Covid have body mass indices over 30. Severe illness is heavily skewed to patients with co-morbidities and the unvaccinated. Generally speaking, the patients have slightly less severe illness, shorter stays and lower mortality so far.

Finally, we look at Covid related deaths since January 1st, 2021, in Graph Four. A barely discernable increase since the beginning of April.

So, whatever is going on with respect to the progress of the pandemic, the widely trailed tsunami of hospitalisations has not arrived yet – in fact, we seem to be on the downslope of the ‘third wave’.

The Figures Don’t Match Up To the Fear, a Doctor WritesRead More

By Michael Curzon  /  7 August 2021 • 20.49
                   
43 comments

“This is Still a Very Dangerous Disease,” Says Boris Johnson. But Neil Ferguson Disagrees: “The Equation has Fundamentally Changed”

Boris Johnson today told reporters that Covid is “still a very dangerous disease” as he encouraged people to stick with self-isolation when ‘pinged’. “Don’t forget, we will be coming forward with a new system from August 16th,” he said during a visit to Surrey Police HQ in Guildford. “Until then please everyone, stick with the programme.”

He also warned against drawing “premature conclusions” from the dropping coronavirus case numbers, saying:

I’ve noticed, obviously, that we are six days in to some better figures. But it is very, very important that we don’t allow ourselves to run away with premature conclusions about this. Step Four of the opening-up only took place a few days ago, people have got to remain very cautious and that remains the approach of the Government.

The PM’s remarks may be little more than prudent caution, but describing Covid as “still a very dangerous disease” doesn’t tally with the fatality rate, always very low for most of the population at below 0.1%, and now apparently reduced further including for those at higher risk by the vaccination programme. Does Boris not believe the vaccines are effective? If he doesn’t, what was the point of them? The Government needs to sort out its messaging on this.

“This is Still a Very Dangerous Disease,” Says Boris Johnson. But Neil Ferguson Disagrees: “The Equation has Fundamentally Changed”Read More

By Will Jones  /  27 July 2021 • 13.16
           
115 comments

All U.K. Children Could Be Offered Covid Vaccines by the End of the Year

The Government will announce its plans for the vaccination of children against Covid later today and is expected to say that only clinically vulnerable children and those living with vulnerable adults will be included in the national roll-out – for now. It hasn’t taken long for reports to emerge suggesting that all children could be offered a vaccine by the end of the year. The argument is that it will be difficult to reach herd immunity if children remain unvaccinated. The Telegraph has the story.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is expected to announce that only vulnerable youngsters between the ages of 12 and 15, and 17 year-olds within three months of their 18th birthday, will be offered a jab amid concerns there is too little data on safety and efficacy in young people.

But the JCVI is expected to leave the door open for more children to be vaccinated once trials conclude later this year, the Telegraph understands.

In June, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved the Pfizer jab for 12 to 15 year-olds in Britain following early trial results in teenagers, but there is still no data for younger children. 

Pfizer is expected to release results on trials for five to 11 year-olds in September and two to five year-olds by November, with the company expecting regulator approval within a month of releasing positive data. AstraZeneca is also conducting trials in children aged six to 17, with the British team likely to release results before the end of the year.

On Sunday, experts warned that it may be difficult to reach herd immunity in Britain if children are not vaccinated. Nearly one in five people in the U.K. are under 16 and, despite everyone being offered a vaccine, around 12% of adults have not had a first jab.

Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College, a member of SAGE, told the BBC: “In the absence of vaccinating it’s inevitable that we’re going to have very high numbers of cases in teenagers, and we will not be able to reach herd immunity without significant immunity in people under 18.”

The JCVI is expected to keep the situation under review and will be watching the results from trials closely. 

Scientists are particularly concerned that vaccination may damage the developing immune system of younger children. Different age groups may require different doses, further complicating the roll-out, and companies must show it will not make children who get Covid more ill – which has happened with other vaccines in the past. 

Experts are also worried that the benefits to children may not outweigh the risks, making vaccination ethically dubious and leaving the Government vulnerable to legal challenges.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The Government will continue to be guided by the advice of the JCVI, and no decisions have been made by ministers on whether people aged 12 to 17 should be routinely offered Covid vaccines.”

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  19 July 2021 • 10.24
             
65 comments

Letter in Telegraph About the Damage Done By Imperial’s Alarmist Modelling

There was a good letter in the Telegraph today co-signed by Lockdown Sceptics contributor David Campbell and his colleague Kevin Dowd. It was a pithy summary of a piece they co-authored for Spectator Australia earlier this month.

SIR – Matt Ridley’s criticism (Comment, June 21st) of the distorted presentation of scientific predictions in order for those predictions to have political impact identifies the worst feature of current public policymaking.

Amazingly, however, in the case of Covid policymaking his criticism is insufficient. The crucial prediction was that of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, which said that 510,000 deaths would occur “in the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour”. This was misleading in the extreme, for there was absolutely no possibility that the outbreak of this disease would not be met by widespread spontaneous changes in behaviour, or that the Government would not take extensive measures to support them.

The world has been turned upside-down by an absurd, alarmist prediction of what was always a zero-probability event, as it was this prediction which panicked the Government into adopting a “suppression” policy.

Professor David Campbell
Lancaster University Law School
Professor Kevin Dowd
Durham University Business School

By Toby Young  /  23 June 2021 • 17.18
     
23 comments

Chris Whitty Warns of Summer AND Winter Waves as Neil Ferguson Raises Prospect of New Lockdowns – But Data Show the Third Ripple is Already Peaking

The doom-mongers of SAGE were out in force again yesterday, building on their recent victory in Downing Street to keep stoking the fear. The Independent brings us the latest wisdom from Imperial College’s Professor Neil Ferguson.

The third wave of COVID-19 cases in the UK has already began, according to Government advisers – who said it was possible strict lockdown curbs would have to reintroduced at some point this year.

It comes as a new study commissioned by the Government found Covid infections have increased 50% since the start of May – as the country struggles to combat the rise of the highly-transmissible Delta variant first detected in India.

“We’re at the beginning of [the third wave] now,” said Professor Neil Ferguson, the Imperial epidemiologist dubbed “Professor Lockdown” by the tabloid press.

Ferguson told a media briefing that his latest modelling predicts between 100 and 1,200 deaths a day at the peak of the summer “third wave”, before raising the possibility that restrictions may need to be introduced.

I’m very much hoping we won’t need to reverse course [on the easing of restrictions] – and I suspect we won’t. We will inevitably see cases and hospitalisations rise. But the key is [how] manageable the level is.

Chris Whitty Warns of Summer AND Winter Waves as Neil Ferguson Raises Prospect of New Lockdowns – But Data Show the Third Ripple is Already PeakingRead More

By Will Jones  /  18 June 2021 • 01.19
         
115 comments

Even in Ferguson’s Worst Case Scenario, the Cost of Saving One Life From Covid is a Million Pounds

We’re publishing an original piece today by Glen Bishop, the second year maths student at Nottingham University who often writes for Lockdown Sceptics about the shortcomings of the models that SAGE has relied on throughout this crisis. In this piece, he does a back-of-the-envelope calculation to work out how much it has cost the Government to save one life from Covid. Not surprisingly, it is considerably more than the £30,000 per Quality Adjusted Life Year that is the upper limit in the guidance the NHS relies upon when deciding how to allocate resources. Here is an extract:

Financially, the test for rationality of a response to public health is the one used, until the Covid hysteria, by the NHS and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). NICE is the body that decides whether treatments, technologies and medicines are beneficial enough to warrant their cost. The upper limit the NHS and NICE are willing to pay for a treatment yielding one extra quality adjusted life year (QALY) is £30,000. If £30,000 is the accepted limit that can sustainably be spent by society on giving an individual one extra quality year of life, then have lockdowns met this test? Even with Ferguson’s projections, they aren’t even close.

As mentioned, using the 500,000 deaths projection would lead to 372,000 lives having been saved. Conveniently the National Audit Office puts the cost of measures announced by the government by the end of March at £372bn. That would be, as readers will notice, £1 million per life saved. But again, taking QALYs lost per Covid death of seven years gives £143,000.

This is a cost per year of life nearly five times more than the £30,000 the Government previously deemed an upper limit for what was reasonable and sustainable to spend on treatments such as that for children’s cancer medication. Is it the Government’s or Professor Ferguson’s position that protecting somebody from Covid is worth spending five times more than protecting someone from cancer or do they not understand the realities of the policies they are implementing?

Worth reading in full.

By Toby Young  /  17 June 2021 • 15.08
     
38 comments

“We May Need to Wait” before Pushing Ahead with Unlocking, Says Boris

Members of SAGE are out in force today, warning the Prime Minister that Britain should not unlock on June 21st because of the risk posed by the Indian Covid variant. Professor Neil Ferguson said on Wednesday that this strain could result in restrictions needing to be “tightened“, despite the recent increase in Covid cases not being matched by an increase in deaths. Following further pressure from other members of the advisory group today, the Prime Minister has said that Number 10 may have to “wait” for more data before pushing ahead with ending the lockdown. The MailOnline has more.

Top scientists have called for Downing Street to delay next month’s lockdown-easing because of the spread of [the Indian variant], which has been found in half of England’s 300-plus local authorities.

SAGE member Professor John Edmunds said he would advise Boris Johnson not to take the next step as planned because “at the moment it looks a little bit risky”.

Meanwhile, fellow adviser “Professor Lockdown” Neil Ferguson warned the plans to ease restrictions hang “in the balance”. He said the now-dominant strain would trigger a “small third wave” but that the next two or three weeks would be “critical” in deciding whether it was safe to move to step four on the roadmap.

But one of the Government’s top scientists today hailed “encouraging” data that showed hospitalisations remain low despite cases having ticked up in every region except the East Midlands. However, Dr Yvonne Doyle, Public Health England’s Medical Director, said they have risen slightly and that they were “concerned” about the Indian variant.

Discussing the threat of the Indian variant during a visit to a hospital in Colchester this morning, Mr Johnson said: “As I have said many times I don’t see anything currently in the data to suggest that we have to deviate from the road map. But we may need to wait.

“Don’t forget the important point about the intervals between the steps of the road map, we put that five weeks between those steps to give us time to see what effect the unlockings are having.”

Mr Hancock admitted he “desperately” wanted to proceed with plans to drop the final set of lockdown restrictions next month but ministers would only do that “if it’s safe”. He will address the nation tonight in a 5pm Downing Street press conference.

In a statement that suggested lockdown could continue until every man and his dog has been vaccinated, the Health Secretary said: “Our vaccination programme has reached 73% of the adult population, but that means that more than a quarter still haven’t been jabbed.”

43% of adults have had both jabs, but that means that more than half are yet to get the fullest possible protection that two jabs give.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  27 May 2021 • 16.23
               
223 comments

U.K. Records 3,000 Covid Cases for the First Time in a Month – but Deaths Stay in Single Figures

Professor Neil Ferguson says that the spread of the Indian Covid variant could result in lockdown restrictions needing to be “tightened” – but as Britain recorded more than 3,000 Covid cases today for the first time in a month, deaths remained in the single figures. This follows Professor Sunetra Gupta’s recent warning regarding fear being drummed up about variants due to an increase in cases.

What we’re trying to do is prevent people from dying. Whether or not infections go up with a new variant is not relevant. It is important that people don’t die.

We have protected vulnerable people now… I’m sure that [vaccines] will protect vulnerable people against this new variant from death. Maybe not from infection, but that’s not relevant…

The MailOnline has more on the most recent Covid figures.

Daily infections today (3,180) spiked by 18% compared to last Wednesday’s figure, reaching their highest level since April 12th (3,568).

But deaths remained in single figures, with nine fatalities today up slightly on the three posted last Wednesday. Day-to-day counts can fluctuate – but the overall trend remains flat.

And Britain’s mammoth vaccine drive continued at full steam ahead, with 387,987 top-up jabs dished out across the country yesterday. It takes the U.K.’s number of fully vaccinated adults to more than 23.6 million…

It comes as “Professor Lockdown” Neil Ferguson today said it was impossible to say whether the June 21st date for England’s last stage of easing restrictions will go ahead because of the Indian variant.

He warned the B.1.617.2 strain – which is now spreading in almost half of England’s 300-plus authorities – could hinder Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown and lead to measures needing to be “tightened”, if data showed it was much more transmissible. 

But the notoriously cautious academic struck a note of optimism, saying the huge vaccine roll-out means the U.K. is currently in a “much better place” than in December, when the Kent variant first began surging through the country before triggering a devastating second wave.

And Professor Ferguson… also suggested the nation could cope if the variant was proven to only be 20 to 30% more transmissible – which SAGE experts say is feasible.  

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  26 May 2021 • 21.37
         
56 comments

Professor Neil Ferguson: Indian Variant Outbreaks are “Flattening”

Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College’s modelling team appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning where he took a surprisingly sanguine attitude to emerging data on the Indian variant in the UK. The Spectator has the transcript.

Presenter Nick Robinson asked him: “Transmissibility is this key thing that you’re looking to get the answer to. When do you think you will have that answer and is it really a case as we were hearing earlier on the programme which is if it is 50% more transmissible this variant, that’s little short of a disaster, but 20% we could kind of live with?”

Ferguson said:

So first of all it’s never all or nothing with science, you gain evidence as the data is collected. Certainly it is much easier to deal with 20 and 30 per cent than it would be 50% or more. The challenge we have – and just to explain to people why this is difficult, I mean we’re tracking this virus you could say “Well, why can’t we immediately see how it outcompetes the existing Kent variant?” – is because of how it was introduced into the country. 

It was introduced from overseas, principally into people with Indian ethnicity, a higher chance in living in multigenerational households and often in quite deprived areas with high density housing so we’re trying to work out whether the rapid growth we’ve seen in areas such as Bolton is going to be typical of what we could expect elsewhere or is really what is called a “founder effect” which is often seen in these circumstances. 

There’s a little bit of – I would say – a glimmer of hope from the recent data that while this variant does still appear to have a significant growth advantage, the magnitude of that advantage seems to have dropped a little bit with the most recent data so the curves are flattening a little but it will take more time for us to be definitive about it.

It certainly does seem to be flattening. Here’s the latest data from the hotspots.

Bolton
Blackburn with Darwen

New daily infections have also been dropping fast in India for some days now, having peaked in Delhi almost a month ago.

Professor Neil Ferguson: Indian Variant Outbreaks are “Flattening”Read More

By Will Jones  /  19 May 2021 • 13.01
   
44 comments

The Maddening Mystery of Imperial’s Invulnerable Reputation Despite its Dire Record of Failed Model Predictions

Phillip W. Magness in AIER has crunched the numbers and shown how poor Imperial College’s modelling has been at predicting the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic under different policy responses in every country in the world (well, 189 of them). Yet for some unexplained reason Neil Ferguson and the rest of the Imperial team remain respected authorities on epidemic modelling and management. Magness writes:

COVID-19 has produced no shortage of doomsaying prophets whose prognostications completely failed at future delivery, and yet in the eyes of the scientific community their credibility remains peculiarly intact.

No greater example exists than the epidemiology modelling team at Imperial College-London (ICL), led by the physicist Neil Ferguson. As I’ve documented at length, the ICL modelers played a direct and primary role in selling the concept of lockdowns to the world. The governments of the United States and United Kingdom explicitly credited Ferguson’s forecasts on March 16th, 2020 with the decision to embrace the once-unthinkable response of ordering their populations to shelter in place.

Ferguson openly boasted of his team’s role in these decisions in a December 2020 interview, and continues to implausibly claim credit for saving millions of lives despite the deficit of empirical evidence that his policies delivered on their promises. Quite the opposite – the worst outcomes in terms of Covid deaths per capita are almost entirely in countries that leaned heavily on lockdowns and related nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in their unsuccessful bid to turn the pandemic’s tide.

Assessed looking backward from the one-year mark, ICL’s modelling exercises performed disastrously. They not only failed to accurately forecast the course of the pandemic in the US and UK – they also failed to anticipate COVID-19’s course in almost every country in the world, irrespective of the policy responses taken.

Time and time again, the Ferguson team’s models dramatically overstated the death toll of the disease, posting the worst performance record of any major epidemiology model.

Magness has put together a table of all the countries with the predictions ICL made for them and their actual outcomes. The results should be fatal for the reputation of anyone whose job it is to make accurate predictions of the future course of events. But not ICL it seems, whose credibility appears to be invulnerable despite repeated and consistent failure. Magness wonders why.

Why is Ferguson, who has a long history of absurdly exaggerated modeling predictions, still viewed as a leading authority on pandemic forecasting? And why is the ICL team still advising governments around the world on how to deal with COVID-19 through its flawed modeling approach? In March 2020 ICL sold its credibility for future delivery. That future has arrived, and the results are not pretty.

Worth reading in full.

By Will Jones  /  7 May 2021 • 23.38
       
28 comments