CATALOGUE OF FLAWED PREDICTIONS FROM THE PROF WHO FEARED 510,000 WOULD DIE

COVID FEBRUARY 18, 2020

PREDICTION: Prof Ferguson said: ‘Our best estimate is that maybe one per cent of people who get infected might die.’

FACT: Most subsequent estimates by other leading epidemiologists have been significantly lower than one per cent.

MARCH 16

PREDICTION: Modelling by Prof Ferguson’s team forecast that if Britain took no measures, there could be 510,000 deaths and a need for 180,000 critical care beds at the peak of the pandemic.

FACT: To date, there have been 135,147 Covid-related deaths in the UK. At the pandemic’s peak, 4,000 people were being mechanically ventilated - thankfully, a small fraction of Ferguson’s grim assessment.

DECEMBER 21

PREDICTION: The virus would ‘probably’ decline over the following two weeks.

FACT: It actually increased over the next ten days before peaking at New Year.

JULY 18, 2021

PREDICTION: ‘Almost inevitable’ that ending lockdown would trigger 100,000 cases and 1,000 hospitalisations a day – and ‘we could get’ to double that.

FACT: Summer wave cases peaked at less than half his figure – at 48,000 a day. Admissions to hospital are currently at a rate of about 1,000 a day – but nowhere near his fear of 2,000.

JULY 28

In a surprise U-turn after 16 months of regular doommongering, Prof Ferguson said he expected that by September or October ‘we will have put the bulk of the pandemic behind us’.

Covid isn’t Prof Ferguson’s first brush with controversy over a virus crisis:

MAD COW DISEASE

(2002) PREDICTION: He claimed that vCJD, the human form of Mad Cow Disease, could kill up to 150,000 Britons.

FACT: Today, the death toll is 178.

BIRD FLU (2005)

PREDICTION: After analysis of the 1918 Spanish flu, he feared ‘around 200million people’ might die.

FACT: The World Health Organisation says H5N1 avian flu has killed 455 people globally.

SWINE FLU (2009)

PREDICTION: The human mortality rate would be in a range of 0.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent, but ‘most likely’ 0.4 per cent.

FACT: By the end of 2009, the actual rate was 0.026 per cent.