Epic Codswallop

Neil Ferguson, the director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA), head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College, London, who made a blunder of such epic proportions that economies worldwide are crashing, has resigned in disgrace.

The question is, who, in power anywhere worldwide, actually listened to and based policy on the man who has gotten wrong so many times in the past?

 How wrong?

In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 150,000 people could die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE. 

In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009. 

In 2009, a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K.

Who is responsible for not doing their due diligence before actually turning his model loose on the COVID-19 model?

Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay.

A 13 year old computer code not intended for the purpose it was used for, no scientific result-checking.

How much of our leadership is still basing policy on the false information produced from this model?  Is there a model out there that actually gives a more reasonable, scientifically based platform under which leadership can start walking back the lockdown?

This, my friends, is why you should never drink the Codswallop Cocktail the media and/or big government serves you before checking the ingredients.
Update: There's more info here about Ferguson's fully disclosed conflicts of interest due to funding by big pharma.