‘Leaders trapped in disastrous narrative’
Ivor Cummins is a Dublin-based biochemical engineer with a stellar career in complex data-driven corporate problemsolving. An expert medical research analyst, he has been “leveraging” the work of leading epidemiologists on Covid-19. Our latest Planet Normal guest interviewee, Cummins delivers stinging analysis, albeit in a mellifluous Irish brogue.
“The benefit-cost ratio of the original lockdown – given economic destruction, undiagnosed cancers, the stealing away of the lives of our youth – has been disastrous,” he says, arguing anti-covid measures in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland have already caused more deaths than they’ve prevented.
“Ministers are now trapped in their own narrative – one way to escape is to keep doing lockdown measures and then claim, when death rates turn out not so bad, that the measures were the reason.”
Cummins points to Sweden, where fatalities per capita are lower than the UK and US, despite few restrictions. “The Swedes aren’t smug, but they should be,” he says. “They followed the science and are now home and dry, with daily Covid mortality on the floor and society opened up.”
Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, says Cummins, “has a long, sordid history of bad projections on BSE and Sars, being out by a factor of 10 or even 100” – a claim Ferguson denies. “But Ferguson and Imperial are part of the club.”
Expressing “anger on behalf of the next generation, and everyone hurt by this lockdown”, he acknowledges “a few more people will die as winter comes – but they always do, it’s a normal phenomenon”.
Cummins lambasts “this enormous over-reaction” by the Government. “Our leaders have refused to consider new evidence as it’s emerged,” he says. “And that’s the true sign of unscientific thinking, blocking yourself from new data and sticking to an original paradigm.”