[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.

[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.

[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.

[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." 

[Truthoverpower]

The jig is up for all the scaremongering liberals

we’re on day 12 of day 15 of the presidential order

this whole thing is OVER next week

mark my words

[Mister Da]

Most of these predictions are educated guesses at best.