Neil Ferguson’s Latest Faux Pas in a Long Line of Fear-Driven Predictions

The real story here is that Neil Ferguson is somehow still regarded to have any credibility whatsoever.

(This article is meant to serve as an archive to the original due to the host domain no longer being active)

By Don Via Jr, via Covid19Up.org ― AUGUST 18, 2021

The infamous (and ought to be, disgraced) Professor Neil Ferguson has botched yet another fear-driven prediction regarding a COVID-19 case surge in the United Kingdom.

In July, Professor Ferguson once again postulated the dire consequences of lifting the UK’s lockdown restrictions. He stated it was “almost inevitable” that doing so would bring more than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases a day—potentially up to 200,000.

Ferguson had to rescind that prognosis just a few weeks later, as the severity of the surge has been lackluster at best. After a slight spike above 50,000 cases, the majority of which were mild or asymptomatic, the number quickly settled down to 27,335 cases by August 9. Also mostly asymptomatic or mild.

That’s definitely not 200,000 COVID-19 cases. And the death toll remains generally stagnant.

The data actually reflects the opposite of what pundits and officials claimed would happen. Immediately following the UK lifting its lockdown mandate, cases fell by 40%.

That is not to say that the people infected are insignificant in any way, but it does indeed severely undercut professor Ferguson’s fear-mongering.

The real story here is that Neil Ferguson is somehow still regarded to have any credibility whatsoever.

Public officials and mainstream media still place Ferguson on a pedestal as a leading COVID-19 authority despite having a demonstrable history of inaccuracy and his previous “scientific” projections being devastatingly false.

As this author has recounted in two previous reports, Neil Ferguson’s track record is anything but unsullied. First writing for The Free Thought Project in January of this year:

“It has been the decision of governments the world over to exercise wanton reckless abandon to bring the global market to a screeching halt. And on a consensus of what? Faulty computer coding? As many have exhaustively covered throughout this crisis, the policy for governments around the world to institute sweeping lockdown mandates has absolutely no scientific basis.Beginning in May, first reported by The Telegraph, independent data analyst experts revealed that the Imperial College pandemic projection models were completely inaccurate. It was these models, designed by Professor Neil Ferguson, that were used as justification to begin worldwide lockdowns. Yet upon this groundbreaking news coming to light, it received almost no coverage from mainstream outlets. Analysts showed Ferguson’s models had several mathematical errors, and were ran on obsolete software. Leading experts who examined it say it could be “the most devastating software mistake of all time”. They called it “totally unreadable” & “a buggy mess that would get you fired in the private industry” and whose approach “ignores widely accepted computer science principles”.Ultimately, Ferguson himself was forced to resign from his position at the Imperial College of London for breaking lockdown protocols. This guy had such little faith in the accuracy of his own models that he was completely comfortable disregarding his own data — with further investigation showing he has a track record of doing so. Despite this, governments around the world hastily accepted these models without first considering if it should undergo an independent peer review. The choice was made to base policy decisions that could potentially change the history of our planet as we know it on blind faith.”

Other esteemed experts, such as Stanford University professor of disease prevention John Ioannidis, one of the foremost respected and cited in his field, said of the Imperial model:

“The Imperial College study has been done by a highly competent team of modellers. However, some of the major assumptions and estimates that are built in the calculations seem to be substantially inflated.”

In fact, shortly after the initial models were used as justification to begin the lockdowns, Ferguson appeared to drastically lower his prediction following a new analysis by the Imperial college team. Resulting in a recalculation of the figure to one 25 times smaller than originally estimated. He then doubled down on his first projection, causing quite a stir of confusion online.

Since the day that fateful decision was made, the world has been plunged into what is arguably the largest expansion of authoritarianism and attack against civil liberties in recent human history.

The rest of the report goes on to demonstrate data purporting how the ruling class financially benefited from policies that decimated working-class and lower class economies. Further enriching themselves and effectively bringing about the largest transfer of wealth of any era.

The report also simultaneously exemplifies the disastrous consequences of these policies.

Including multiple reports from the United Nations, showing that hundreds of millions of people are now being forced into starvation and poverty—decades of work fighting these very things being undone—because of the policies instituted at the behest of Professor Ferguson’s faulty data models.

In my follow up report from July 2021, titled New Research Shows Coronavirus Lockdowns Cost More Lives Than They Saved, even more evidence was displayed showcasing these horrid ramifications. An excerpt from the article reads:

“• Drug use and subsequent overdose deaths are increasing at an alarming rate.• Deaths by suicide are on the rise both nationally and internationally.• More heartbreaking still, what is now being referred to as an epidemic of child suicide as the self-inflicted deaths of children is now on the rise.• As well as causing a noticeable increase in both domestic violence and child abuse. Including sexual assault the world over, as human rights groups have warned that human trafficking has surged during lockdowns.

These are the statistics that we rarely if ever hear from the media pundits and policy officials that arrogantly parade around as humanity’s saviors.

The report concluded with the following uncompromisingly forthright statement:

“To be quite blunt, these policies should be regarded as a crime against humanity.It goes well beyond a nauseating example of government malfeasance. Policymakers were rash, reactionary, and criminally negligent. Blood is on their hands, and a lot of it. We should all be quite frank about it; the decisions of lawmakers to enact these policies is directly contributory to the deaths of countless people. They are culpable, and liability should most certainly be applicable. Manslaughter is generally defined as the unintentional killing of another human being. So while democide may not fit the bill due to a seeming lack of intent behind these killings; what does one even call mass state-sponsored criminally negligent manslaughter? Is there even a word for it? If not someone ought to think of one quick, because there are a lot of government officials that deserve to be charged with it.”

In this writer’s opinion, Professor Neil Ferguson belongs at the very top of that list. And just as much so for those who blindly followed his word, as this is not the only time in his ill-fated career that Professor Ferguson has drastically missed the mark. His tenure is rife with ineptitude.

Noted by the UK’s Daily Mail, in 2001 Professor Ferguson was instrumental in the data models projecting the trajectory of the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in England.

Policies implemented under Ferguson’s advisory based on his data resulted in the mass slaughter of over six million animals to stop the spread of the disease. A decision which left rural England economically devastated at the cost of £10 billion.

As the Mail states, Professor Michael Thrusfield of Edinburgh University, who unlike Ferguson is an actual expert of animal diseases, “claimed the model made incorrect assumptions about how foot and mouth disease was transmitted and, in a 2006 review, he claimed Imperial’s foot and mouth model was ‘not fit for purpose’, while in 2011 he said it was ‘severely flawed’.”

Having told The Daily Telegraph on March 27, 2020, “the episode was ‘a cautionary tale’ about the limits of mathematical modelling and he felt a sense of ‘déjà vu’ about the current situation,” following the UK’s lockdown mandate days prior.

In 2002, modeling from Ferguson’s Imperial team predicted 50,000 deaths could result from the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE or Mad Cow Disease). Later stating it could become as high as 150,000 should the disease spread to sheep as well. The actual death toll was only 177.

Then in 2005, Ferguson again predicted global calamity. Claiming that around 200 million people would be killed during the bird flu pandemic. However, according to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy’s 2005 Avian Influenza Year-End Review, just 142 people were counted as fatalities of H5N1.

The review stated: “What didn’t happen in 2005, of course, was a human pandemic. By the end of the year, the virus still had not shown an ability to spread easily from person to person.”

Yet again in 2009, Ferguson’s track record of inaccuracy continued. That year, England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson released an estimate based on analysis conducted by Ferguson and his Imperial college team. The estimate being that a worst-case scenario would see 65,000 Brits perish from the swine flu pandemic.

But at the pandemic’s end, less than 500 were found to have died from the H1N1 virus.

Despite these various past follies (and even present blunders) Ferguson has retained an utmost smug demeanor. In the face of an infamy brought about by a career of notorious failures and even forced resignation. He still arrogantly stands atop his pedestal as one of Britain’s “premier health advisors.” And the British establishment is all too eager to allow it.

Ferguson seemingly makes statements on a whim based on reckless data models. He recants his statements at leisure with complete disregard for the consequences already taking effect. As Dr. Ron Paul recently pointed out, after recanting previous statements, Ferguson has neglected even attempting to offer any sort of apology for the catastrophic results that have already ensued from his impetuousness.

The incredible encroachments against personal freedom of the last 16 months goes well beyond the cliché of giving the State an inch and watching them take a mile. They’ve taken several miles and continue to do so as the goalposts continue moving.

Now, as countless mediums of despotism are imposed, the world is writhing in protest. For several months, most recently on the 24th of July, over a million protesters in dozens of countries around the globe took to the streets in mass uprisings against new lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccine passport mandates.

One of the only countries not experiencing this is Sweden. Recently it was reported that the country has yet again reached zero COVID-19 deaths per day. Sweden’s overall health is not diminishing, the economy is intact, and their liberty is mostly secure. Despite being lambasted by establishment talking heads the world over, it appears that Sweden has solved the coronavirus problem. And they did so by disregarding Professor Ferguson’s abysmal recommendations.

If only more nations had followed their lead.

At the end of the day, Neil Ferguson is one of two things: catastrophically incompetent in his profession, or a pathological liar.

In any case, he should never again be considered to have any sort of credibility whatsoever.