Professor Neil Ferguson: Indian Variant Outbreaks are “Flattening”
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College’s modelling team appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning where he took a surprisingly sanguine attitude to emerging data on the Indian variant in the UK. The Spectator has the transcript.
Presenter Nick Robinson asked him: “Transmissibility is this key thing that you’re looking to get the answer to. When do you think you will have that answer and is it really a case as we were hearing earlier on the programme which is if it is 50% more transmissible this variant, that’s little short of a disaster, but 20% we could kind of live with?”
Ferguson said:
So first of all it’s never all or nothing with science, you gain evidence as the data is collected. Certainly it is much easier to deal with 20 and 30 per cent than it would be 50% or more. The challenge we have – and just to explain to people why this is difficult, I mean we’re tracking this virus you could say “Well, why can’t we immediately see how it outcompetes the existing Kent variant?” – is because of how it was introduced into the country.
It was introduced from overseas, principally into people with Indian ethnicity, a higher chance in living in multigenerational households and often in quite deprived areas with high density housing so we’re trying to work out whether the rapid growth we’ve seen in areas such as Bolton is going to be typical of what we could expect elsewhere or is really what is called a “founder effect” which is often seen in these circumstances.
There’s a little bit of – I would say – a glimmer of hope from the recent data that while this variant does still appear to have a significant growth advantage, the magnitude of that advantage seems to have dropped a little bit with the most recent data so the curves are flattening a little but it will take more time for us to be definitive about it.
It certainly does seem to be flattening. Here’s the latest data from the hotspots.
New daily infections have also been dropping fast in India for some days now, having peaked in Delhi almost a month ago.
Does this mean we can have our freedom back, Boris?
The Government’s panic over local outbreaks of the Indian variant is very concerning as it suggests they have not yet adjusted to the mindset necessary to restore normality without getting sucked into kneejerk ‘Zero Covid’ thinking.
As ever, the question remains: at what point will the Government accept, like Florida and Texas, that the pandemic is over?
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Pretty sure no-one on this site wants to hear a single word this evil and feckless man has to say.
I don’t care what this monster says whether its ‘good’ news or ‘bad’ news. He needs ignoring. He is mad – he’s been wrong on everything ever. Maybe he’s right this time by accident – who cares.
He needs flattening.
Hahahaha!
Perhaps he’s suffering with Indian variant CJD.
Please ..no more Feargoeson..
Can you overlay the steep rise in cases with the rise in testing capacity. Matt Wancock must have sent all of his unwanted testing strips to India after failing to get everyone (!) in the UK to test twice a week, spare 120 million tests per week would certainly see an increase in false positives!
Whatever happened to everyone getting tested twice a week ? I have no idea what provisions were put in place and don’t know of anybody who has tried to get so double tested.
There’s a delightfully named “swabbing centre” near me. Always deserted
It says in the picture of him, cut off at the bottom, that he is an Epidemiologist! Nothing is truthful at all in the MSM. No wonder we’re in this mess.
Excel wrangling Soothsayer might be more appropriate.
Witch Doctator
Well it’s not going to say “Unsuccessful physicist turned computer code bodger / MILF shagger” is it?
No, obviously. Why the sarcasm? He is a physicist and a mathematical modeller.
A degree in theoretical physics is a good indicator that you are trained and capable in certain branches of mathematics, statistics not commonly being one of them. It certainly does not make you a computer scientist or an epidemiologist. But then again, our Prof Pantsdown doesn’t seem to have the slightest awareness of his own limitations does he (such as his career record of being wrong by at least an order of magnitude with absolutely anything he ever modelled).
A totally inaccurate mathematical modeller, who the hell needs one of those?
Because we don’t like him.
Brilliant 👍🤣
He’s a bloody spreadsheet jockey.
Actually, intelligent use of spreadsheets is far more useful in this morass than fictional computer gaming code.
More like knob-jockey.
The whole Indian variant scare and ‘we may have to postpone end of lockdown’ was a ruse to drive up the vaccine count IMHO. Lets see if I’m right.
Judging by the lengthy vaccine queues up north, looks like it worked.
Just as vaccine passports was too. Top world government priority is to get 100% injected at any cost.
We have a world government now? they certainly did that on the sly.
When can we have a referendum on it then?
So Bolton is showing around 100 positive tests per day in an area where testing is being ramped up. What this doesn’t tell you is that they are amost entirely under 40 with the majority of them in their teens.
And most of the tests are false positives. They want to find stuff, remember.
Positive test rate in Secondary School testing is currently 0.1% …..
Haven’t worked out how to attach an image yet but look here to see the data
The Spectator Covid Tracker | Misc | The Spectator
On the government’s Covid-19 dashboard, there no sign that the local hospitals are seeing any increased trade as a result of this outbreak. (The local hospital trust, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, is showing just 2 Covid patients and no new admissions in the last 3 days they have reported. However, it’s also worth mentioning that they’re obviously so busy that the figures haven’t been updated for over a week…)
Someone lock this individual up.
As a start!
A man you wouldn’t trust with an Airfix model.
Brilliant!
Behold the Rona Rasputin
“you gain evidence as the data is collected.”
This is a bit of a departure from the past.
I thought the whole point of COVID science was that you created a model and then stuck with its predictions regardless of what the empirical data said.
Maybe Ferguson recognises that this particular bandwagon has run out of road.
As always, the chief Witch Doctator is presented as unquestioningly a scientist by the BBC.
If you go directly to PHE the ‘case’ numbers were increasing.in the days up to the 13th of May the last day it was updated (why is there such a lag?) but the % + was declining over several days.
Surely then this is an artefact of increased testing and the cases have been receding for nine or so days running?
The continuing use of the disastrous Imperial shit-show says all you need to know about BBC journalism, with its privileged Oxbridge-bred incompetence (cf. ‘Johnson’)
Death to Ferguson and SAGE members.
Who gives a shite what this low life scum says. Not worth reading at all.
The UKs Fauci.
Enough said.
Why don’t the BBC ask Ferguson where the 1/2 million dead from CJD are buried?
That alone should have meant a public inquiry and a prosecution by the RSPCA and jail, for causing extreme suffering to animals. It made me weep, the sight of newborn lambs stuck and dying in freezing mud by the tens of thousands. When I remember this outrage, I can still see and smell field after field of burning pyres of needlessly slaughtered cattle, and farmers in tears as my train went past.
It’s said that a man is judged by the company he keeps; so what is that sleaze-bag doing in no10, considering the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse he surrounds himself with?
It’s time we took up the refrain – “Not my Prime Minister”. Or better yet, “Not my government”.
Mystic Meg would produce better predictions than this hopelessly inept creature.
More MSM genuflection. Using phrases like “hotspots” from the lockdownists’ lexicon of alarm isn’t helpful in the slightest. Giving such space to the witterings of Ferguson, which amount to “We’ve no idea.”, isn’t helpful either. We want to hear sceptical voices.