DR. FERGUSON’S CLARIFICATION

Powerline ^ | March 27,2020 | PAUL MIRENGOFF

[Hojczyk]

As Scott writes in this post, Dr. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London has clarified his testimony about the number of deaths he predicts will occur in England due to the Wuhan coronvirus. I discussed Ferguson’s predictions yesterday in this post.

I wrote that Ferguson had “warned that an uncontrolled spread of the virus could cause as many as 510,000 deaths in Britain.” (Emphasis added) For the U.S., he projected 2.2 million deaths in an uncontrolled scenario. Now, Ferguson says the death total in Britain is likely to come in under 20,000. I haven’t seen an updated figure from him for the U.S.

In his clarification, Ferguson says, as I did in my post, that his estimate of approximately 500,000 deaths in Britain was based on a scenario in which controls on the spread of the virus are absent. He stands by that assessment of what the death count would have been in that case.

The problem is that, to my knowledge, no serious person in the U.S. was advocating that no measures be taken to control the spread of the virus. Some degree of social distancing and complete isolation of the sick were almost universally viewed as appropriate and, indeed, necessary. Yet, Ferguson’s projection became part of the basis, not just for social distancing and isolation of the sick, but for imposing lockdown style measures in some jurisdictions.

This appears to be what Ferguson wanted. In an interview with the New York Times, he said:

Based on our estimates and other teams’, there’s really no option but follow in China’s footsteps and suppress.

Perhaps this is why Ferguson waited so long to make it clear that, at least in the U.S., the Imperial College forecast that garnered so much attention from policy makers was a strawman

[Retrofitted]

In his clarification, Ferguson says, as I did in my post, that his estimate of approximately 500,000 deaths in Britain was based on a scenario in which controls on the spread of the virus are absent.

This is the way it ALWAYS works. "Well, my prediction would have come true if we hadn't done XYZ, but we did, so it's okay I was wrong because I really wasn't."

[AndyJackson]

The problem is that, to my knowledge, no serious person in the U.S. was advocating that no measures be taken to control the spread of the virus. Some degree of social distancing and complete isolation of the sick were almost universally viewed as appropriate and, indeed, necessary.

Well, there are a lot of non-serious persons who seriously refused to take active public health measures or the need for them seriously. And there are a lot of advocates for, it's just the flu, and let it burn through the population and herd immunity and that sort of nonsense.

Those of us arguing strenuously for this need have been hammered for being panic mongers.

So, no serious student of the current situation could seriously suggest that a lot of serious people were not seriously advocating doing nothing.

[AndyJackson]

It's not a strawman.

When you see kids playing in traffic, pointing out the likely outcome is not a strawman.

[Travis McGee]

Exactly. The RATE of increase is slowing because of the strenuous social distancing measures.

A great example of no measures being taken is happening in New Orleans now, where they ignored the examples of Wuhan and Italy, and held Mardis Gras as usual. That was Feb 25. One month later, they are off to the races.

[JungleGoat77]

Ferguson is director of J-IDEA (Imperial College) which is Saudi funded. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/jameel-institute/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PbRV2Md8Ew&list=PL_rh2bmfPuvM7X4QKZxEjTaINSmm-5s-b

[griswold3]

Too late.
Politicians will not take the risk of losing ‘just one life’. The Left is out in full force to brand anyone as “Murderer”
This will not end well.

[CharlesWayneCT]

No. Nobody was going to let people with active cases of pnemonia walk around, or get treated in hospitals without PPE.

The “worst case” was that stupid old folks home in Washington, where they actually DID treat people without using PPE, and using nebulizers and CPAPs that essentially shot the virus into the air to spread.

But no sane group was going to do that. People were already washing their hands where I work in February. We were already socially distancing. We were already cancelling some plans, and taking precautions.

Ferguson based his worst case it sounds like on a virus running unchecked while the NHS closed it’s doors and went on vacation.

[Travis McGee]

These graphs are not projections or models or guesses about the future.

They are just built from officially reported numbers. You can learn from them, or ignore them, it's up to you. They are log graphs, so to make it easier for folks to understand their exponential nature, the doubling rates are shown in the straight dotted lines.

Personally, I don't believe the numbers from China or Iran. South Korea and Japan do show CV is containable. Interestingly, they both do mass-testing and everybody wears masks in public places, that is, cashiers and customers are not sharing exhaled breaths like we are.

[Pelham]

No one here was compelled to listen to Ferguson’s theory. We have our own virus hunter experts in the CDC and NIH.

I’m sure that they have been following their own models of what Covid could do. And that was based on limited knowledge since China has refused to give CDC access to Wuxan.

[Travis McGee]

I say skip the models, based on theories, and just look at the actual numbers and data, as shown in the graphs above and below.

This guy John Burn-Murdoch (https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch) does amazing work. The graphs are current as of last evening.

[Jimmy The Snake]

I went to the grocery store. There were many people w/ masks, gloves, keeping there distance, and tape on the floor marking proper intervals, marking off the cashier like a Goalie’s crease.

This will be the new norm after the crisis.

[Travis McGee]

This graph breaks out the data by city, state and region, updated March 25.

These are not projections or theories or models. They are based on hard numbers.

(Personally I don't believe China's or Iran's numbers.)

[Travis McGee]

What state was that in?

[AndyJackson]

Those are great graphs to show the facts around the world.

In particular the US was and is - still = on a fast track to oblivion. I hope the next couple of days show it rolling over, but I am not sure that will happen so early. To stay on an exponential increase it is enough that you have sub-population that is on an exponential increase - NYC, New Orleans - with merely linear multiplication to the rest of the country.

[Travis McGee]

NYC and New Orleans are just leading the pack.
I don’t understand how folks, supposedly intelligent, able to watch China, then Italy and Spain, just partied on at Mardis Gras and then on Spring Break.

Have you seen this video of the cell phones on Fort Lauderdale’s beaches, and where they traveled in the week after? This is how a pandemic spreads, on a macro national level.

On the local micro level, it’s supermarket customer, to cashier, to customer, to cashier.

“Want to see the true potential impact of ignoring social distancing? Through a partnership with
@xmodesocial
, we analyzed secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during spring break. This is where they went across the US:”

(Pretty amazing one minute video)

https://twitter.com/TectonixGEO/status/1242628347034767361

[rightwingcrazy]

I think his message was rather clear the first time. Deaths even with mitigation would be frighteningly high. From the Imperial College paper (emphasis mine):

"In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US." 

[AndyJackson]

Great video. Also tells us where are our spoiled brats went back home to - surprise, surprise! [NY BOS PHL AUS DFW HOU PHX DTW CHI]

Clearly college tuition isn’t high enough.

[AndyJackson]

I would like to see the cell-phone tracks of the folks who attended that party of high end wheeler-dealers in Connecticut and 1/2 of them got infected. What were they doing - snorting coke from the same rolled $100?

[Jimmy The Snake]

Ohio - Cincy. We are a couple weeks behind some other areas, and people are getting edgey as they know this will go on for awhile