2005-Neil said Bird Flu could kill 200 million.…Through 2020, it killed 455.
1995-2020–Neil said mad cow disease could kill between 50 and 50,000.…Death toll to date: 178…
2020–Neil said Corona virus could kill 2.2 million in US….
“Ferguson is the Michael Mann of infectious diseases," per commenter, Dr. Who….Michael Mann, “Numbers Chef” image from Climate Depot
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4/9/20, “The [Neil] Ferguson effect,” Powerline, Scott Johnson
“Earlier this week Bill [Steigerwald] forwarded the link to the 2005 Guardian article “Bird flu pandemic ‘could kill 150m.’”…
We have now met the Imperial College London epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology Neil Ferguson--the “gold standard” of disease modeling, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. Ferguson is of course the expert whose projections of huge death tolls from COVID-19 in the United States and the United Kingdom have supported the ongoing shutdowns. Ferguson projected as many as 2,200,000 deaths in the United States and 500,000 deaths in the United Kingdom.
Looking back at that Guardian article, Bill observes that Ferguson has a record of making stupid worst-case predictions about the threat of new viruses. Bill cites “what Prof. Gold Standard said in 2005 about the projected Bird Flu death toll to the Guardian”:
“Last month [Sept. 2005] Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, told Guardian Unlimited that up to 200 million people could be killed [by Bird Flu].
“Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,” said Prof Ferguson. “There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.”
A Department of Health contingency plan states anywhere that there could be between 21,500 and 709,000 deaths in Britain.””
The Bird Flu’s death toll from 2003 to 2020 is 455.
Dr. Ferguson was equally off with his death projections for mad cow disease. He made big headlines in the United Kingdom by predicting that mad cow disease could kill between 50 and 50,000. Bill writes: “Millions of cows were slaughtered. But to be fair, his scientific ‘model’ was right. The death toll [is 178 to date].”…
Among the British publications that have recently drawn attention to Dr. Ferguson’s record are The Sun and The Telegraph.
The Washington Post reported on the Ferguson effect in the current crisis in “A chilling scientific paper helped upend U.S. and U.K. coronavirus strategies.” The New York Times reported on the Ferguson effect in the story “Behind the Virus Report That Jarred the U.S. and the U.K. to Action.” Subhead: “It wasn’t so much the numbers themselves, frightening though they were, as who reported them: Imperial College London.”
Given Dr. Ferguson’s record, however, the numbers should probably have been questioned if not discounted precisely because of the source.
NOTE: Bill also drew my attention to this interesting interview with Michael Fumento.”
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