The numbers used to justify COVID lockdowns were WAY OFF. Why didn’t that matter?
Immediately after the lockdowns were imposed, the WHO projections of astronomical COVID deaths were embarrassed as nonsense. Yet, bureaucrats pushed for extending and deepening the lockdowns.
Johan Giesecke, the former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention [ECDC], has called [Neil] Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory. He also says it was, sadly, “one of the most wrong.”
—National Review1
Though lockdowns would mean not only great and painful sacrifices but severe limits on rights and liberties, Western citizens largely did not revolt when they were first imposed. Why not? Because trusted authorities told them COVID was a catastrophic emergency. To support that claim, authorities publicly forecast astronomical numbers of impending dead if lockdowns were not immediately imposed. Those numbers had zero basis in reality.
Whenever Hollywood makes a movie about some impending catastrophe, and there is a scene with government bureaucrats fretting about what to do, the overriding priority is always to manage the emergency without producing a mass panic. Why this common trope? Because it’s much harder to keep people alive if the streets become a riot of fear and mayhem. Responsible bureaucrats try to avoid that.
The COVID crisis was not like that.
The bureaucrats at the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States, and the United Kingdom projected astronomical numbers of expected COVID deaths. These numbers came from one scientist, Neil Ferguson, already known in policy circles (though not with the general public) for always making catastrophic predictions of pandemic disaster and always getting them completely wrong.
Ferguson’s numbers caused a mass panic. And that mass panic allowed bureaucrats—who never conducted a cost benefit analysis on this—to justify a state of emergency: lockdowns.
Soon after, Ferguson’s catastrophic predictions were embarrassed by the official statistics of COVID deaths. Though probably inflated, these official numbers came in at a very small fraction of Ferguson’s ridiculous projections. Yet the bureaucrats continued pretending that the sky was falling and insisted—with great agitation—that the lockdowns should be extended and deepened. And then they called for inoculation mandates.
We, the free citizens of the West, need to understand what happened here, because the lockdowns abolished our rights and liberties and inflicted a tremendous, unprecedented human cost in wealth and health. And the lockdowns didn’t even help us with COVID. We need to make sure that Western bureaucrats cannot do this to us again.
So let’s have a look.
In a separate piece I will take a look at Ferguson’s track record, so you can appreciate just how remarkable that anyone—unless their sole purpose was to impose lockdowns and inoculation mandates on us—should have paid any attention to Ferguson. Here I will examine Ferguson’s predictions against the official numbers, so you can appreciate just how wrong Ferguson was.
Computer models and reality
At the start of the pandemic, Scott Atlas was an advisor to President Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force. He didn’t last long. Frustrated by his deep disagreements with his alarmist colleagues, Atlas resigned.
For his dissenting views, Atlas was attacked in the media as someone who “spread misinformation about the virus and downplayed its seriousness.”2 The Wikipedia page on Atlas still today parrots NBC News and the Washington Post to claim that “Atlas at times spread misinformation about COVID-19.”3
But now it appears that Atlas was right about everything. He was not downplaying the seriousness of COVID, as the mainstream media claimed; others were exaggerating COVID’s lethality. In a January 2022 presentation, Atlas stated:
“This all started back in early 2020 when the World Health Organization [WHO] came forward and made several claims …, first and foremost … that [COVID] was extremely lethal.
(…)
[The] claims … were absolutely incorrect to anyone who had any experience looking at things like fatality rates of diseases, but they took hold rapidly in the public. And why did they take hold? Because they were joined in by computer modelers. … And these models were based on false assumptions.” (my emphasis)
Notice: the claims about COVID’s supposed mammoth lethality “took hold rapidly in the public … because they were joined in by computer modelers.” Yes, because people are awed by computer models. They hear ‘computer model’ and think: that’s science.
No. A model is a speculation—the computer doesn’t know a thing. A computer model is a hypothesis. You program your hypothesis into the computer so that you can press ‘run’ and better observe its logical implications. But it’s still just a hypothesis. Therefore, no matter what happens in the computer, if the model is “based on false assumptions” it will be wrong about the world.
One computer model in particular “received international attention,” explains the medical journal The Lancet, “when it predicted 2,200,000 deaths in the USA and 510,000 deaths in the UK without some kind of coordinated pandemic response.”4
That model was authored by Neil Ferguson, an epidemic modeler at Imperial College (London) who was also a prominent member of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and director of the Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Neil Ferguson was a big deal. Professor Lockdown’—as Ferguson came to be known—was “the epidemiologist that the whole world listens to,” as one French headline saluted.5
Ferguson’s panic-inducing numbers: 2,200,000 and 510,000
According to Ferguson, these astronomical numbers of deaths were expected to happen in just four months, from April through July 2020, as shown in the following graph from Ferguson’s original paper6 :
(It seems the curves might be mislabeled.)
But just how big were these numbers? To understand that, you need context. Allow me.
When Ferguson predicted 2,200,000 US COVID deaths in the following four months, the American Cancer Society was forecasting a total of 606,520 US cancer deaths for the entire year 2020.7 According to Ferguson, the new disease—a contagious disease—was almost eleven times more deadly than cancer, one of our biggest killers. And that was his low-ball estimate, “not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality.”8
You can see why so many people panicked.
What did Ferguson recommend by way of response? “Epidemic suppression.” The “social and economic effects” of that, he recognized, “will be profound.” Yes, that was obvious: lots of people would be hurt. But “epidemic suppression,” he insisted, “is the only viable strategy.”9
Hm. When the plan you propose is guaranteed to impose “profound” costs both “social and economic”—in other words, when your proposal is going to hurt giant numbers of people—shouldn’t you compare that to some alternatives? At least to one—a Plan B. You know, to make sure that you are not making a huge mistake. But no. Ferguson flatly stated this was “the only viable strategy” without even comparing to other imaginable strategies, and without presenting a cost/benefit analysis of his recommendation!
The “epidemic suppression” he recommended included “population-wide social distancing combined with home isolation of [infected] cases and school and university closure.” The “bars and restaurants” were also considered especially dangerous—they should be closed.10
So “epidemic suppression” meant this: lockdowns.
Now, Ferguson, as we said, was a very big deal: “the epidemiologist that the whole world listens to.” Indeed, every time he announced a catastrophe was right around the corner, the whole world jumped. And it jumped this time. When the WHO endorsed Ferguson’s projections, UK prime minister Boris Johnson—Ferguson’s advisee—rushed to impose lockdowns in the UK.
Soon after that, as reported by ABC News, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the bureaucrat responsible for the US response to COVID-19, bragged on ‘Good Morning America’ that he’d convinced Donald Trump to copy the UK and impose lockdowns in the US too. How? “The president [said] … that he was informed that up to 2.2 million could die if no steps were taken to slow the virus’ spread, according to projections.”11
Yes, Ferguson’s projections.
The US-UK-WHO triad, waving Ferguson’s numbers, influenced the entire world. So it was on the authority of Ferguson’s numbers that bureaucrats everywhere gave themselves emergency powers and suspended basic rights and liberties of the citizenry.
But how good were Ferguson’s numbers?
“Johan Giesecke, the former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention [ECDC], has called Ferguson’s model ‘the most influential scientific paper’ in memory. He also says it was, sadly, ‘one of the most wrong.’ ”12
Just how wrong were Ferguson’s numbers?
Bear in mind that the official COVID statistics—not the initial projections, but the post-facto government numbers after certifying COVID cases and COVID deaths—have probably been grossly inflated (as I argue elsewhere). But let’s accept them here and ask: According to these government COVID statistics, how many people were officially reported as dying from COVID during the four months—April through July—contemplated in Neil Ferguson’s model?
In the United States: a little under 155,000 (against Ferguson’s 2,200,000; that’s 7%).13
In the United Kingdom: less than 40,000 (against Ferguson’s 510,000; that’s 8%).14
Now, here you might be tempted to say: Well, but wasn’t it because of the lockdowns that fewer people died than expected? The answer seems to be: not at all. The conclusion of several studies that have looked at this issue is that the lockdowns either had no effect on COVID mortality or made it worse.
As I said, the official numbers are probably grossly inflated. But let’s take them. By those official numbers, COVID fatalities in the US were not eleven times (!) greater than the cancer fatalities but rather just a little over half of what cancer does and about half of what heart disease (the leading cause of US deaths) does.15
That’s still a tragedy. But if we can grieve all those cancer and heart-disease deaths without spinning ourselves into a world panic, why couldn’t we do the same with COVID deaths?
Yes, COVID is very contagious, but almost everyone infected survives. You had to be sick with something else already to have a serious risk of death. According to the CDC, 94% of those registered officially as COVID deaths in 2020 had, on average, four comorbidities.16 It was mostly older people running the risk of death. And even so, the most-at-risk category, the ‘over 70’ age bracket, had 97.1% survivability in 2020, according to a study by Cathrine Axfors and John P. A. Ioannidis.17
It was obvious from the beginning that serious risk of death was a problem only for the elderly and already very sick. So why not protect the vulnerable and leave the rest of the world system alone?
But no. When the data to show that Ferguson’s numbers were completely wrong became available to the US and UK governments (this happened almost overnight), the bureaucrats in these countries—the countries considered in Neil Ferguson’s model—did not apologize to the public, explain Ferguson’s mistake, and change course. To the contrary, they called for extending and deepening the lockdowns. And then the same bureaucrats pushed for imposing inoculation mandates with an experimental ‘vaccine’ technology. This, once again, was influential around the world.
All of this suspended our basic rights and liberties!
Not to mention the vast material and human costs. Here is one: according to a World Bank estimate, the lockdowns pushed 150 million people into “extreme poverty” by the end of 2021.18
How could the bureaucrats get away with all that? They could because Western minds, engulfed in the managed reality of the numbers 2,200,000 and 510,000, had already been thrown into mass panic—a panic stoked and managed by the extended lockdowns themselves, for if they sky was not falling, people wondered, then why was everybody still on lockdown and wearing facemasks?
We must seriously ask this question: Was this a power grab? In other words, were Ferguson’s preposterous numbers generated maliciously?
I consider that possibility in the following piece:
‘Professor Lockdown’ Modeler Resigns in Disgrace; National Review; 6 May 2020; by John Fund
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/professor-lockdown-modeler-resigns-in-disgrace/
‘Controversial White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas resigns’; NBC NEWS; 30 November 2020; By Hallie Jackson and Tim Stelloh
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/controversial-white-house-coronavirus-adviser-scott-atlas-resign-n1249460
Wikipedia, consulted 26 January 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Atlas
Biggs, A. T., & Littlejohn, L. F. (2021). Revisiting the initial COVID-19 pandemic projections. The Lancet Microbe, 2(3), e91-e92.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00029-X/fulltext
‘10 choses à savoir sur Neil Ferguson, l’épidémiologiste que tout le monde écoute face au Covid-19’; L’Obs; 9 Abril 2020; Par Eric Aeschimann
https://www.nouvelobs.com/coronavirus-de-wuhan/20200409.OBS27280/10-choses-a-savoir-sur-neil-ferguson-l-epidemiologiste-que-tout-le-monde-ecoute-face-au-covid-19.html
Ferguson, N., Laydon, D., Nedjati Gilani, G., Imai, N., Ainslie, K., Baguelin, M., ... & Ghani, A. (2020). Report 9: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Siegel RL, Miller KD, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2020. CA Cancer J Clin. 2020 Jan;70(1):7-30. doi: 10.3322/caac.21590. Epub 2020 Jan 8. PMID: 31912902.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31912902/
Report 9 (op. cit), pp.6-7
Report 9 (op. cit), p.16
Report 9 (op. cit), pp.1,8
‘What's behind Trump's striking reversal on the coronavirus timeline?’; ABC NEWS; 30 March 2020; By Jordyn Phelps and Ben Gittleson.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-striking-reversal-coronavirus-timeline/story?id=69876573
‘Professor Lockdown’ Modeler Resigns in Disgrace; National Review; 6 May 2020; by John Fund
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/professor-lockdown-modeler-resigns-in-disgrace/
You may consult the CDC’s official numbers for leading causes of death here:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
CDC data shows that 94% of all COVID deaths presented with at least one additional co-morbidity.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/covid19-comorbidity-expanded-12092020-508.pdf
Axfors, C., & Ioannidis, J. P. (2021). Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in community-dwelling populations with emphasis on the elderly: An overview. medRxiv, 2021-07.
‘Cost of Lockdowns: A Preliminary Report’; American Institute for Economic Research; 18 November 2020.
https://www.aier.org/article/cost-of-us-lockdowns-a-preliminary-report/