united kingdom to regress imperial measures

#United kingdom to regress imperial measures code#
#United kingdom to regress imperial measures series#

Ferguson didn’t really make all those errors if you look at his actual statements, he was sane and reasonable.Ĭould be. In the above-linked article, Fund seems to be asking the question rhetorically.īut it’s a good question, so let’s try to answer it.

#United kingdom to regress imperial measures series#

Did he say, “I expect it will be under 200 deaths if we cull the herds, but otherwise it could be up to 2000 or more, and worst case it could even be as high as 150,000?” Or did he flat out say, “150,000, baby! Buy your gravestone now while supplies last.”? I wanna see the quotes.īut, if Ferguson really did have a series of previous errors, then, yeah, Why did anyone ever listen to this guy? For example, what did Ferguson exactly say when he “predicted that up to 150,000 people could die” of foot-and-mouth disease. I guess I’d have to see the exact quotes that are being referred to in the paragraphs excerpted above. National Academy of Sciences-but maybe there’s more of the story I haven’t heard. When Ferguson was in the news a few months ago, why wasn’t there more discussion of his atrocious track record? Or was his track record not so bad? A google search turned up this op-ed by Bob Ward referring to Ferguson’s conclusions as “evidence that Britain’s political-media complex finds too difficult to accept.” Regarding the foot-and-mouth-disease thing, Ward writes, “Ferguson received an OBE in recognition for his important role in the crisis, or that he was afterwards elected a fellow of the prestigious Academy of Medical Sciences.” Those sorts of awards don’t cut much ice with me-they remind me too much of the U.S. So the real scandal is: Why did anyone ever listen to this guy?

#United kingdom to regress imperial measures code#

He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results.

Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K. 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, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 20. In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE. In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. Ferguson 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.