Neil Ferguson Retracts His Forecast of Over 1 Million Americans Dead From COVID-19

Neil Ferguson

Neil Ferguson, the Vice-Dean of Medicine at Imperial College, London,yesterday told the UK’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology that he now expects increases in National Health Service capacity and ongoing restrictions to people’s movements make him “reasonably confident” the health service can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in two or three weeks. UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, he said, and could be much lower.

Ferguson just 5 days ago said the virus could lead to the deaths of 250,000 people in the UK and up to 1.2 million in the US.

At the time of his nutty forecast of millions dead the Financial Times wrote:

Prof Ferguson, an influential epidemiologist whose work had just been credited with helping to upend coronavirus response strategies on each side of the Atlantic: thank you for everything you’re doing and try to get some rest...The world now depends on the computer models Prof Ferguson and his team have developed as never before. Their task may seem overwhelming but Prof Wheater at Oxford says one thing is worth bearing in mind. “If I trust anybody’s calculations I trust Neil’s,” he says. “He’s a very careful, very solid person.”

Ferguson should be put on lockdown for the duration. Allow him nothing but the ability to trade bitcoin over his cellphone.

All these clowns have no idea about the basics of modeling.

For my original call out of Ferguson's original absurd forecast see: Will 2.2 Million Americans Die From COVID-19?

-RW