I don’t mean to denigrate science, but to celebrate it. I believe there was amazing and wonderful science in the Covid epidemic.
Just wondering if that covers the forecasting and modeling that has resulted from it.
Thanks to some questionable modelling — poorly presented and often misrepresented — it is true to say that never before has so much harm been done to so many by so few, based on so little, potentially flawed data. It’s a national scandal.
It is not the fault of the modelers. Public health professionals, the media, as well as politicians and governments, all interpreted their work.
Modeling and forecasts created an atmosphere of fear and lockdown that was unforgivable.
Modeling and forecasts created an atmosphere of fear and lockdown that was unforgivable.
I don’t doubt that modelling is important, or that there has been some good modelling. It has too often been drowned by panicky forecasts.
I do not have, as Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London has implied, ‘an axe to grind’. However, truth is what I care about.
You should be questioned if you have any influence on policy, as the modelers did. They haven’t been asked enough, to be honest.
It is my goal to find out why the government, media outlets and public health establishment have become so addicted to doomsday scenarios. Then they normalize them for everyone.
I don’t pretend to be an expert. I am not. However, I do have a few quotes from articles and papers that were written by academics.
The Foot and Mouth crisis in 2001 was the first time this scandal occurred. We acted rashly, killing and burning many animals based on modeling. Suicides by farmers followed and banksruptcies ensued.
The methodology behind this particular madness was examined in peer-reviewed research. And in a 2006 paper by the Royal School of Veterinary Studies, the authors determined that modelling from Imperial College and Professor Ferguson ‘probably had the most influence on early policy decisions’.
Devastatingly, the authors wrote: ‘The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism.’ A damning criticism of one group of scientists from another.
A 2011 paper by four British academics said that the models supporting culling were at best ‘crude estimations that could not differentiate risk’. At worst, ‘inaccurate representations’ which lead to ‘scientific opportunism’.
I do not have, as Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London has implied, ‘an axe to grind’. But truth is something I am concerned about. You should not be able to influence policies as much as the modelers. They haven’t been asked enough, to be honest.
Let’s go back 20 years. Like Foot and Mouth with Foot and Mouth with Covid, a panicked government was presented with a scenario of 500,000 deaths. This scared it and forced them into profound actions with surprising results.
Imperial College published a June 8 report that argued for lockdown’s success after the initial lockdown was implemented. According to the report, NPIs (nonpharmacological interventions like lockdown) have saved more than three million lives across Europe.
Imperial had originally provided grim predictions that led to lockdown.
This work is currently being challenged. In a paper entitled ‘The Effect of Interventions on Covid 19’, 13 Swedish academics said the Imperial study’s conclusion went beyond its data.
Regensburg and Leibniz university academics refuted the Imperial study’s claims that NPIs imposed by 11 European countries saved millions of lives. They said ‘their methods involve circular reasoning’ and that the UK’s lockdown was ‘superfluous and ineffective’.
There’s a growing body of work which is, frankly, taking apart Imperial’s study.
Remember, we have spent £370 billion on lockdown. Schools were shut down because of fears that older adults would be infected by the virus.
Well, a paper in the BMJ published last March found ‘no evidence of an increased risk of severe Covid 19 outcomes’.
We shut down society and schools, doing extraordinary harm to the lives of people — especially young people.
I’m not a lockdown sceptic, as Professor Ferguson casually described some of his critics, but I’m becoming so. Do you want to know the reason? It’s because I saw the evidence
I’m not a lockdown sceptic, as Professor Ferguson casually described some of his critics, but I’m becoming so. Do you want to know the reason? You can read all the evidence.
Swedish chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has said of Imperial’s work that ‘the variables… were quite extreme… We were always quite doubtful’. While former chief epidemiologist Johan Giesecke said Ferguson’s model was ‘almost hysterical’.
In July 2021, Professor Ferguson said we could hit 200,000 daily cases — that’s where the crystal ball starts to fail. But we didn’t get anywhere near 100,000.
He blamed the UEFA Football Championship for messing up his modelling because — shock horror — during the competition people went to pubs to watch matches and when the tournament finished, they didn’t. It seems that this is the main problem. Reality steamrollers model when it meets reality. These models cannot deal with real-life complexity.
Imperial and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, among others, predicted that there would be between 3,000 and 5,000 Covid deaths per day this winter. They proved to be wildly inaccurate.
Dr Clive Dix, a former vaccine taskforce head, said: ‘It’s bad science, and I think they’re being irresponsible… this is just headline grabbing.’
However, the tides are turning.
Oncology professor Angus Dalgleish describes [Professor] Ferguson’s modelling as ‘lurid predictions’ and ‘spectacularly wrong’.
The great Carl Heneghan, another scientist known for his fairness of comment, says ‘all ministers see now is the worst case scenario’. While Professor Brendan Wren adds ‘dodgy data and flawed forecasts have become the hallmark of much of the scientific establishment’ — what a damning quote.
I’m in agreement. What’s the result of all this? The result, as UCL’s Professor Francois Balloux notes, is a ‘loss of trust in government and public institutions for crying wolf’. That’s just it.
In the Army we call it the ‘most dangerous course of action’ versus the ‘most likely course of action’.
Researchers and doctors have chosen the most risky course of action, while politicians and certain sections of the media have presented this as the best.
Politicians said follow the science as a way of shutting down debate, while the defensiveness of public health decision-making only ever cost other people’s health and livelihoods.
The BBC, The Guardian and other newspapers are salivating at state control and the tsunami of panic.
We are grateful to The Spectator and The Telegraph for fighting for freedom of expression and introducing an alternative that is being defended.
Although lockdown seemed understandable initially, it was proving to be a poor decision after the first summer.
So I’ve got a question for Professor Ferguson and the doomsday modellers: Why are so many of your fellow academics disputing your work and your findings?
BBC: Why did you not challenge Ferguson (SAGE), independent SAGE, or the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies? You allowed yourself to be the propaganda arm for the state lockdown.
To the government: How could we be so blind to believe that following science would mean shutting down scientific discussion?
What is the point of using other data sets to compare with British citizens? Why did we think it was in our nation’s interest to create a grotesque sense of fear to manipulate behaviour?
In 20 years, we made two errors in judgment by modeling. Government should not rely again on glorified guesswork.
I’m sure Imperial and all these other people do the best they can — I’m very happy to state that publicly. But why has so much of their work been described — in the words of other academics — as ‘unvalidated’, ‘flawed’, ‘not fit for purpose’, ‘improbable’, ‘almost hysterical’, ‘overconfident’, ‘lurid’, ‘inflated’, ‘pessimistic’, ‘spectacularly wrong’ and ‘fraudulent’?
Bob Seely, MP for the Isle of Wight. Here is an excerpt of his speech from last week’s debate on scientific modeling in pandemic.