On Fri, 08 May 2020 17:03:58 -0700, resigler wrote:

I think in this specific case, however, Neil Ferguson has a bit of a
reputation for getting it not only wrong but way wrong. For example:

Fair comment. I don't remember hearing his name before he popped up this
time.

He was behind research resulting in the destruction of 11 million sheep
and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also
predicted that 150,000 people could die.

I'm uncertain whether he was right or not about the foot & mouth cull. It
certainly spread very rapidly (and stopped all gliding apart from local
flying). Certainly it would have been unwise to eat anything that came
off infected farms, so from that POV, animals that couldn't be eaten had
to be killed and disposed of alongside the large number that the F&M
killed: it was very contagious anfd stock were never allowed off infected
farms.

But I don't recall much concern that it was likely to spread to people.
Yes, there was a clamp-down on rural travel, but that was more to stop
F&M spreading to other farms then from worries that people might catch it.

There was what seemed like an inordinate number of farm animals being
swapped and generally trucked round between farms in the run-up to that
F&M epidemic. Do you know if he said anything about that?

Predicted in 2002 that up to 50,000 people would die from mad cow
disease in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from mad cow.

Now that was a rum do, and almost entirely due to the practise of feeding
bits of slaughtered animals to other herbivorous animals. Again, I don't
recall anything being attributed to him - just that the perps seem to
have all got off rather lightly.

Predicted in 2005 that up to 150 million people would be killed from
bird flu. Reality was that only 282 people died worldwide from the
disease between 2003 and 2009.

Ferguson’s advice in 2009 said a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ was
that the swine flu would kill 65,000 Brits. Reality was that swine flu
killed 457 people in the U.K.

Pretty hard to take such a guy seriously but that's exactly what
happened when he said there would be 2.2 million dead in USA and 500,000
dead in UK. Oops, missed it by "that" much...

The real question seems to be not how could he be so wrong, but why did
he ever rise to the prominence he achieved recently. Maybe nothing more
worthy than Buggins Turn: if you stay in the civil service long enough
and suck up to enough of your superiors you'll rise, like scum, to the
surface.

I've had contracts in various departments, so have seen their top people
in action: they aren't all that impressive when seen from the bottom.
Gilbert & Sullivan had it spot on when they wrote "Pinafore" and included
the couplet:

So stick tight to your desks and never go to sea,
And you're sure to be the ruler of the Queen's Nayvee

Looks like some things never change.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org