{"id":1445864,"date":"2023-12-26T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1445864"},"modified":"2023-12-26T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T15:00:00","slug":"boris-was-right-not-to-trust-covid-panic-purveyor-neil-ferguson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/boris-was-right-not-to-trust-covid-panic-purveyor-neil-ferguson\/1445864\/","title":{"rendered":"Boris Was Right Not To Trust ‘COVID Panic-Purveyor’ Neil Ferguson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boris Was Right Not To Trust ‘COVID Panic-Purveyor’ Neil Ferguson<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson via he Brownstone Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/strong> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2018clear it\u2019 by treading on death.<\/p>\n

The mainstream media\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0Boris\u2019s statements regarding the credibility of \u201creasonable worst-case scenarios\u201d arising from models.<\/strong> Here is an excerpt of the\u00a0Telegraph<\/em>\u2019s account:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In the 2009 swine flu pandemic, it was predicted that 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.<\/p>\n

Asked by the inquiry counsel whether the scares had contributed to\u00a0the Government\u2019s hesitancy<\/a>, Mr. Johnson said: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2001, Neil Ferguson and colleagues used modelling to make predictions about control strategies for the\u00a0foot-and-mouth epidemic<\/a>\u00a0in Great Britain:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hastening the slaughter of animals with suspected infection is predicted to slow the epidemic, but more drastic action, such as \u2018ring\u2019 culling or vaccination around infection foci, is necessary for more rapid control. Culling is predicted to be more effective than vaccination.<\/p>\n

And what about Ferguson\u2019s 2005 prediction for containing an\u00a0emerging influenza<\/a>\u00a0pandemic in Southeast Asia, which influenced the stockpiling of\u00a0modestly<\/a>\u00a0performing antivirals and helped focus on the only game in town (influenza), ignoring all other pathogens?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

These widely exaggerated claims contributed to the 2009 influenza and COVID-19 debacle: The \u2018ring containment\u2019 and \u2018We must act now\u2019 messages create the illusion of controlling both.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As for swine flu, Ferguson popped up again. Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson revealed the NHS was planning for a \u2018worst case scenario\u2019 of\u00a065,000 deaths<\/a>\u00a0if the IFR was as high as 0.35% and 19,000 deaths if it was a rate of 0.1%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Based on Ferguson\u2019s modelled worst-case estimates, the figures were considered unhelpful <\/strong>in Dame Deirdre Hind\u2019s independent\u00a0review<\/a>\u00a0of the UK\u2019s response to the 2009 influenza pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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?\u00a0<\/p>\n

He should have\u00a0sat on his hands<\/a>\u00a0until 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If we are to jump at every mystery bug, then with the latest\u00a0fears<\/a>\u00a0of China\u2019s \u2018mystery\u2019 pneumonia sweeping the world, we\u2019ll be locking down near every year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 2020 death debacle, there are still a lot of unexplained features, which we will be exploring in future posts \u2013 if we are not culled before we get to it.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Republished from\u00a0The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 12\/26\/2023 – 05:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/covid-19\/boris-was-right-not-trust-covid-panic-purveyor-neil-ferguson<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boris Was Right Not To Trust ‘COVID Panic-Purveyor’ Neil Ferguson Authored by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson via he Brownstone Institute, We have held the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1445864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1445864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1445864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1445864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1445864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}