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Imperial College yet again panics the masses. What a small world we live in. The “Nu variant” scare you keep hearing about is coming from the same people and institutions that spawned the last COVID scare, and the one before that, and the one before that one, dating back all the way to the onset of COVID Mania. [Update: the World Health Organization has now labeled this strain the “Omicron variant,” in noticeably skipping over “Xi” in the greek alphabet] The corporate press and world governments have produced an incredible amount of noise about a claimed new COVID variant, the...

Imperial College’s modelling... could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost. ... those of us with a professional and personal interest in software development have studied the code on which policymakers based their fateful decision to mothball our multi-trillion pound economy and plunge millions of people into poverty and hardship. And we were profoundly disturbed at what we discovered. The model appears to be totally unreliable and you wouldn’t stake your life on it. Imperial’s model appears to be based on a programming language called Fortran,...

In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code. But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs...

Early in the Wuhan virus’s trajectory, the British government announced that it was going to go for a herd immunity approach (that is, the approach Sweden eventually used). Because the government is Tory, the left-leaning media insisted this would kill every Briton.These arguments gained weight when epidemiologist Neil Ferguson introduced his model showing that anything other than a total lockdown would kill over 500,000 Britons and 2.2 million Americans. Britain and America instantly stopped in their tracks. Only now, months later, are we learning that Ferguson’s model was a buggy mess. The British Telegraph reports that the disgraced epidemiologist,...

The heralded model United Kingdom experts have largely used to guide their coronavirus policies is “totally unreliable,” according to experts. The criticisms follow a series of policy turnabouts, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to extend the national lockdown. The United States also used the model, which predicted upwards of 2.2 million deaths in the US without proper action. The prediction helped influence the White House to adopt a more serious approach to the pandemic. Experts have derided the coding from Professor Neil Ferguson, warning that it is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair...

Neil Ferguson, a mathematical epidemiologist at Imperial College London, panicked policy makers around the world when he released his computer model projecting that the coronavirus pandemic would result in 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million in the U.S. It is hard to understand why his pronouncement was accepted so uncritically when he has a history of being wrong. Very wrong. According to The Spectator, in 2005, Ferguson said that up to 200 million people could be killed from bird flu. The actual number was several hundred. In 2009, he gave an estimate of 65,000 deaths from the Swine...

Via Nate Silver, most of us are way out of our depth in trying to understand this stuff. I feel more out of my depth each day as I try to reconcile the increasingly hair-raising projections being made by most epidemiologists with the implications of the Oxford model of the disease, which speculates that asymptomatic infections are much more common than anyone realizes. But I’m going to try anyway.If Oxford is right, it means two things are likely true and they’re both welcome news. One: The case fatality rate is much lower than we’ve assumed. A large number of...

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...

I’m glad that I started paying attention to the dispute between the Imperial College and Oxford before watching this or I would have been confused as hell. But if, like me, you’ve been following that divergence, you get what she’s saying here. Bottom line: We still have no real idea how many people have this disease and aren’t showing symptoms, for whatever reason. It could be a small number. It could be an immense number. The death and hospitalization rates depend entirely on knowing, as does our national response. Pause here to watch the clip (or at least the...

did they predict this? The two professors argue that the best evidence of the coronavirus death rate being significantly lower than what is being reported may lie in the Italian town of Vò. On March 6, the town's 3,300 residents were tested. Of these, 90 tests came back positive, indicating a prevalence of 2.7% of the population having the virus. If one were to apply this to the entire province where the town is located, which has a population of 955,000, it would mean there were actually 26,000 infections at the time, and not just the 198 that were officially...

A major source of information upon which government leaders have relied to urge or order the canceling of public events, shut down of businesses and sheltering in place has proved to be inaccurate. The Federalist's Madeline Osburn points out many members of the media and state officials are relying on an online mapping tool called COVID Act Now. The site, with a map of catastrophic forecasts for each state, boasts of enabling "political leaders to quickly make decisions in their Coronavirus response informed by best available data and modeling." "But a closer look at how many of COVID Act Now's...

How a handful of Democratic activists created alarming, but bogus data sets to scare local and state officials into making rash, economy-killing mandates. As U.S. state and local officials halt the economy and quarantine their communities over the Wuhan virus crisis, one would hope our leaders were making such major decisions based on well-sourced data and statistical analysis. That is not the case.A scan of statements made by media, state governors, local leaders, county judges, and more show many relying on the same source, an online mapping tool called COVID Act Now. The website says it is “built to...

NEW YORK — An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press.Flu experts knew it was a very bad season, but at least one found size of the estimate surprising.“That’s huge,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice as much as what health officials previously considered a bad year, he said.In recent years, flu-related deaths...

No, I’m not talking about Melania; due to the ongoing Covid 19 crisis, FLOTUS Friday, like much of America, has been suspended until further notice and the country remains on lockdown.For what it’s worth this is my take so far:It would seem that the models used to forecast the run of the Wuhan virus run are faulty. The forecast used to predict 2.2 million U.S. deaths and 510,00 deaths in Great Britain was produced by Imperial College in London. It is “the epidemiological modeling which has informed policymaking in the United Kingdom and other countries in recent weeks.”OK, but is...

Dr. Deborah Birx on Thursday provided encouraging coronavirus numbers suggesting that some of the predictive models were incorrect. “There’s no model right now, no reality on the ground, where we can see that 60-70 percent of Americans are going to get infected in the next 10-12 weeks,” she said. Without specifically naming the Imperial College, Brix referred to models that predicted there could be 500,000 coronavirus deaths in the United Kingdom and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. The scientist of the model revised the estimate of deaths in the United Kingdom to be roughly 20,000 people or fewer....

Government policy and guidance crafted in an effort to “flatten the curve” of coronavirus-related deaths has largely been based upon an Imperial College London model headed by Professor Neil Ferguson. The terrifying model shows that as many as 2.2 million Americans could perish from the virus if no action is taken, peaking in June. However, that model is likely highly flawed, Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta argues. Professor Gupta lead a team of researchers at Oxford University in a modeling study which suggests that the virus has been invisibly spreading for at least a month earlier than suspected, concluding that as...

British scientist Neil Ferguson ignited the world’s drastic response to the novel Wuhan coronavirus when he published the bombshell report predicting 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed. After both the U.S. and U.K. governments effectively shut down their citizens and economies, Ferguson is walking back his doomsday scenarios. Ferguson’s report from Imperial College, which White House and other officials took seriously, said that if the U.S. and U.K. did not shut down for 18 months, and isolation measures were not taken, “we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3...

Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, who created the highly-cited Imperial College London coronavirus model, which has been cited by organizations like The New York Times and has been instrumental in governmental policy decision-making, offered a massive revision to his model on Wednesday. Ferguson’s model projected 2.2 million dead people in the United States and 500,000 in the U.K. from COVID-19 if no action were taken to slow the virus and blunt its curve. However, after just one day of ordered lockdowns in the U.K., Ferguson has changed his tune, revealing that far more people likely have the virus than his team figured....

Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, who created the highly-cited Imperial College London coronavirus model, which has been cited by organizations like The New York Times and has been instrumental in governmental policy decision-making, offered a massive revision to his model on Wednesday. Ferguson’s model projected 2.2 million dead people in the United States and 500,000 in the U.K. from COVID-19 if no action were taken to slow the virus and blunt its curve. However, after just one day of ordered lockdowns in the U.K., Ferguson has changed his tune, revealing that far more people likely have the virus than his team figured....

1/ This is a remarkable turn from Neil Ferguson, who led the @imperialcollege authors who warned of 500,000 UK deaths - and who has now himself tested positive for #COVID; https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ … 2/ He now says both that the U.K. should have enough ICU beds and that the coronavirus will probably kill under 20,000 people in the U.K. - more than 1/2 of whom would have died by the end of the year in any case bc they were so old and sick. 3/ Essentially, what has happened is that estimates of the viruses transmissibility have increased - which implies...