By Tony O’Riley
Former government advisor, Neil Ferguson suggested closing down the older years in schools and colleges.
The sacked former British government adviser continues to play prophet of doom by featuring on BBC Radio 4 to make negative conjectures about deaths arising from social mixing. that “people will die” if social distancing measures are not reimposed over the Christmas period.
Professor Neil Ferguson, a former member of the Scientific Advisory Group is the same man who was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. In a massive margin of error, there were fewer than 200 deaths.
In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would likely 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.
Ferguson said the government would have to weigh up the “cost versus the benefits” in the coming weeks. Professor Fergusson was just short of recommending that all schools in the Uk close down.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “It risks some transmission and there will be consequences of that. Some people will die because of getting infected on that day.
“But if it is only one or two days the impact is likely to be limited. So that is really a political judgement about the cost versus the benefits.”
Ferguson added that the current infection rate was “probably unsustainable” as he called for stricter controls were needed to get the number of cases down.
“There are little hints of slowing, for instance in the north-east of England, but we are not seeing the sort of slowing that we really need to get on top of this,” he continued.
“If the rate of growth continues as it is, it means that in a month’s time we will be above that peak level in March and that is probably unsustainable. We are in a critical time right now.”
Ferguson added: “[Banning households mixing] should have a significant effect, but as yet we have been unable to see it definitively.
“If we go beyond that there is a limit to what we can do in terms of reducing contacts, short of starting to target, for instance, the older years in schools and sixth form colleges where we know older teenagers are able to transmit as adults.
“Of course nobody wants to start moving to virtual education and closing schools even partially. The challenge may be that we are not able to get on top of the transmission otherwise.”
It comes as Professor John Edmunds, also a SAGE advisor, said “radical action” would be needed to stem the rise in coronavirus cases, particularly in regions with high incidence of the virus.
“The only way that we can have a relatively safe and normal Christmas is if we take radical action now to reduce incidence – at the very least in high incidence areas – and keep the incidence low across the country by implementing a package of measures to reduce social contacts,” he said.
“The notion that we can carry on as we are and have a Christmas that we can celebrate normally with friends and family is wishful thinking in the extreme.”
Edmunds told MPs the UK would see “peaks around Christmas, in the new year, of very severe numbers of cases throughout the UK.
The question of why he is still being given a big platform is a serious one. He appears to be either specialising in making false predictions, or he lovesthe attention.