Daily Express

Professor Lockdown confounded science

- FUN, FEISTY AND FEARLESS Email me at carole.malone@reachplc.com Follow me on Twitter @thecarolem­alone

WHY was it the fact that Professor Neil Ferguson couldn’t keep it in his pants heralded his sacking (sorry resignatio­n) not his disastrous doomsday projection­s that forced this country into a financiall­y crippling lockdown?

Of course his towering hypocrisy in telling us all to stay indoors and isolate ourselves from those we love while HE enjoyed extramarit­al nookie with married lover Antonia Staats meant he had to be kicked off the Government’s committe, Sage.

He should also be kicked out of Imperial College. But why was this “moron” (Elon Musk’s word for him not mine) ever allowed to foist his wildly inaccurate, End of Days study on to this Government in the first place? Who made him the Poster Boy for coronaviru­s?

Didn’t anyone bother to check what his farcically off-beam models on past viruses were? Didn’t anyone in Government stop to say: “Actually this bloke’s prediction­s over the past 15 years have all been cobblers.”

Because if they had, they’d have seen Ferguson said Mad Cow would kill between 50 and 50,000 Brits, a range so broad that even me, with my B grade in science, could have taken a better shot at it.The actual death toll was 158.

He said that Bird flu could “probably” kill around 200million worldwide. In the event it killed 455 people globally. In 2009 he said Swine Flu could kill 65,000 in Britain – the death toll was 283.

Ferguson’s spectacula­r failings makes you wonder what passes for a scientist these days. What must your achievemen­ts be before you’re given the onerous responsibi­lity of deciding what happens in the teeth of a pandemic? I know science and scientists can’t ever be exact, but surely anyone with a reputation for being a decent one

must have scored some accurate hits arrogant toe-rag who thought the at some point? Surely, they can’t get rules didn’t apply to him. But not away with saying 500,000 people only has his flagrant breach of could die from Covid (as Ferguson the regulation­s tarnished him, it’s did) when, even with the tarnished the reputation of Government’s often inept handling Imperial College. And we’d be of the virus, there have been under right in thinking that if Professor 30,000 deaths. And no, that’s not Lockdown is the best they have – nothing – but it isn’t 500,000. and the people running the college

I don’t give a stuff that police must have thought he was otherwise won’t be fining him £60 for breaking why make him the frontman lockdown rules but I DO care – then God help us! that a man of such questionab­le So the question remains – why ability was ever allowed to influence DID this Government blindly government policy on a lockdown follow, without question, his hopelessly that has forced us into the worst unreliable studies? recession for 300 years. Surely there It was using Imperial College has to be a price to pay for that? models that led scientists to predict Yes, Ferguson is a hypocrite and an Sweden’s lax measures would

lead to 40,000 deaths In fact there have been fewer than 3,000. So why haven’t we learned from those countries whose scientists advised their government­s at the start of this outbreak to shut borders, to stop all travel, to test everyone who had the virus and trace those they’ve come into contact with? Do our scientists work in a vacuum? Are they so arrogant they don’t talk to other scientists?

We stuck to lockdown because Ferguson terrified us by telling us what could happen if we didn’t.

I wouldn’t trust this bungling pillock to tell me what day it was so why did this Government entrust him with Britain’s survival?

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