the second great alarmist (first was Harvard’s Marc Lipstch) - Neil Ferguson of spooky ICL - wants to have it both ways.
29 Mar: Washington Examiner: ‘Confusion’: Imperial College scientist says 500K coronavirus death projection in UK remains unchanged
by Daniel Chaitin
A top infectious disease modeler and epidemiologist said there is misinformation going around about his research on the expected coronavirus death toll in the United Kingdom.
Neil Ferguson, an Imperial College London professor, said his original estimate, which showed the coronavirus would kill 500,000 people in the U.K., remains true, while a new model reading reflecting the influence of lockdown measures saw that estimate shrink to 20,000 or fewer.
“I think it would be helpful if I cleared up some confusion that has emerged in recent days. Some have interpreted my evidence to a UK parliamentary committee as indicating we have substantially revised our assessments of the potential mortality impact of COVID-19,” Ferguson said in a Twitter thread posted Thursday.
“This is not the case. Indeed, if anything, our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought. Our lethality estimates remain unchanged,” he continued.
“My evidence to Parliament referred to the deaths we assess might occur in the UK in the presence of the very intensive social distancing and other public health interventions now in place,” Ferguson said. “Without those controls, our assessment remains that the UK would see the scale of deaths reported in our study (namely, up to approximately 500 thousand).”
Ferguson, who tested positive for the coronavirus, said Wednesday the coronavirus death toll is unlikely to exceed 20,000 and could be much lower if lockdown measures in the U.K. stay in place, noting that he is “reasonably confident” that the health system can handle the burden of treating coronavirus patients.
His initial March 16 report that showed the disease could cause up to 510,000 deaths in the U.K. also projected up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States from a similar spread. That report, which said social distancing practices might be needed for as many as 18 months to avoid catastrophe, is credited with inspiring more extreme measures to have the public self-isolate to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
Ferguson’s new evidence prompted critics to pan his initial “doomsday” study as alarmist.
Earlier this week, ***Stanford scientists wrote an opinion article suggesting that estimates about the coronavirus mortality rate may be too high and questioned the need for any universal quarantine, noting it “may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/confusion-imperial-college-scientist-says-500k-coronavirus-death-projection-in-uk-remains-unchanged
25 Mar: Washington Examiner: ‘Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?’: Professors claim more data needed to know mortality rate
by Andrew Mark Miller
Two professors of medicine at Stanford University published an opinion article Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting there is little evidence that the coronavirus would kill millions of people without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.
“Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate—2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others,” the article, headlined “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?” and written by Dr. Eran Bendavid and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, reads. “So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.”
The deaths from identified positive cases are “misleading” because of limited data, according to the professors.
“If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases—orders of magnitude larger—then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That’s not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far,” the professors argued...
The professors argued that current epidemiological models aren’t adequate for two key reasons.
“First, the test used to identify cases doesn’t catch people who were infected and recovered. Second, testing rates were woefully low for a long time and typically reserved for the severely ill. Together, these facts imply that the confirmed cases are likely orders of magnitude less than the true number of infections,” it reads...
“A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health,” the article concluded. “We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.”...
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-professors-claim-more-data-needed-to-know-mortality-rate
Dr. John Ioannidis, Stanford epidemiology professor is another whose writings are critical.
compare Ferguson/ICL’s 20,000 revised figure in Wash Examiner with the following:
30 Nov 2018: UK Independent: Ineffective flu vaccine added to 50,000 extra deaths last winter, ONS says
Human suffering and lost lives over winter ‘predictable, preventable and shameful’, fuel poverty campaigners say
by Alex Matthews-King
The flu vaccine’s failure to protect against some of the key strains of the infection contributed to more than 50,000 “extra” deaths in England and Wales last winter, according to data from the Office of National Statistics.
It was the worst winter on record for more than 40 years, with the 1975-76 season being the last time deaths climbed so high above the expected levels.
The NHS was rocked by a record winter crisis in early 2018, with a massive rise in flu cases and sub-zero temperatures triggered by the Beast from the East storm, which added further to death rates...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-vaccine-deaths-nhs-ineffective-crisis-bad-weather-illness-2017-a8660496.html
and nobody blinked, much less locked down.