Well, Duh!

Exaggerated figures.

The academic behind a startling study which projected a two-week ‘circuit-breaker’ could save thousands of lives by New Year has today admitted his figures were wildly over-estimated.

In the paper, Professor Matt Keeling – from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which feeds data into SAGE – suggested more than 100,000 British lives could be spared by January if the country shuts down over half-term.

Has he learned nothing from Professor Pantsdown Ferguson regarding wildly exaggerated figures?

Maybe not. The reality – of which we now have plenty to look at – has failed consistently to match the hyperbole coming from so-called scientists and their flaky modelling. This is something that has been repeated in every outbreak since CJD. A wise man would recognise this and build the modelling around real-world experience, but no, lets pluck some scary figures out of the ether.

There was never any suggestion in the available evidence to support the absurd 100,000 deaths scenario. At its peak this disease (and I’m being generous in using their figures here in attributing excess winter deaths to covid) took around 40,000. This is nowhere near 100,000 and you would have to be staggeringly foolish to come up with such a number.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that comparing known infections to death rates sees lower infections to higher death rates earlier in the year and the opposite now. The most likely explanation is a combination of reduced virility in the disease and the fact that those most vulnerable have already succumbed. Given the tiny death rate compared to infections suggests that the most sensible option is to admit that mistakes were made and repeal the covid act.

But the Warwick University epidemiologist admitted today he wished he ‘hadn’t put these numbers in the study’ because it was an extreme scenario that was only included ‘for illustration’. The Government’s official Covid-19 death toll only puts the death toll so far at 43,000, by comparison.

Then why do it? The likelihood of a worst case scenario was always vanishingly small and as the year has progressed, this thing has behaved exactly as previous bad flu years have. There really is nothing to see there, yet we get these idiotic academics peddling their scary figures and then looking all surprised pikachu faced when they are proved to be wildly inaccurate.

We are surrounded by idiots.