By Tony O’Riley-
Professor Neil Ferguson has expressed optimism that future lockdowns in the Uk will be unnecessary, provided the booster programme is rolled out and the double vaccination of teenagers is pursued.
The scientist, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), claims the “challenge” will be as indoor mixing increases in the winter and vaccine protection wanes, with there “likely to be some upward pressure on case numbers”.
The Imperial College London scientist, whose modelling was instrumental to the UK going into lockdown in March 2020, said: “Overall case trends in the UK are cautiously encouraging in the sense that we have flat or even slightly declining case numbers.
“So long as we can roll out the booster programme and the vaccination of teenagers as promptly as possible, and I do think we’ll probably have to move to second doses in teenagers as well to get effective levels of protection against Delta, as long as that is done in a prompt way, I’m moderately optimistic.
“We can’t rule out some need for additional measures, but I very much doubt we will need to go back into lockdown again.”
The government will be driven by NHS demand, so “some degree of social distancing or other measures” may be needed if there was a “really significant uptick” in hospital admissions.
He added: “I don’t think that would need to go as far as full-blown lockdown, but we night need to re-impose certain restrictions just to get hospital admissions down again.”
Ferguson was among scientists at the Imperial College who ran models used in prior research and erroneously predicted number of potential outcomes, including that, by October m2020 more than 500,000 people in Great Britain and 2 million people in the U.S. would die as a result of COVID-19.
The model also predicted the United States would suffwer up to 1 million deaths even with “enhanced social distancing” guidelines, including “shielding the elderly.” Imperial’s modeling results influenced both British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose a nationwide lockdown and the White House too.
His history of predictions were unimpressive, yet were used to make crucial decisions. He had in the past vastly overestimated deaths from previous public health scares such as bird flu, BSE and foot and mouth disease.
Fergusin was eventually sacked from his advisory post with Downing Street after breaking lockdown rules, but is still being widely quoted in the press for the love of his influential name and academic status.
The vaccination of teenagers may be useful to prevent the spread of the virus, given the history of the surge in schools during last year’s pandemic, but to make future lockdowns dependent on that, especially coming from a man with an awful history of predictions, is preposterous.