Niall Ferguson: Serial Vaccine Pimp
Niall's big mouth has big economic impact.
Foot and Mouth Disease
In 2001, as foot and mouth disease (FMD) broke out in parts of Britain, Ferguson and his team at Imperial College produced predictive modelling which was later criticised as โnot fit for purpose.โ[By whom?] At the time, however, it proved highly influential and helped to persuade Tony Blairโs government to carry out a widespread pre-emptive culling which ultimately led to the deaths of more than six million cattle, sheep and pigs. The cost to the economy was later estimated at ยฃ10 billion.
Mad Cow Disease
Separately, Ferguson predicted that up to 150,000 people could die from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE,'mad cow diseaseโ)โฆPer 2020, there have been fewer than 200 deaths from the human form of BSE and none from sheep to human transmission.[8] The result was an EU ban on British beef exports; and the eventual killing and incineration of over 3.7 million cattle[9].
Bird Flu
In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million people would be killed by bird-flu or H5N1[10]. By early 2006, the WHO had only linked 78 deaths to the virus, out of 147 reported cases.[11]
Swine Flu
In 2009, Ferguson and his team at Imperial College advised the government that Swine flu (H1N1) would probably kill 65,000 people in the UK[12]. He was also one of 16 experts for the emergency committee of the WHO which recommended the declaration of the Swine flu pandemic. At the time he declared consultancy fees from GlaxoSmithKline, Baxter, and Roche.[13] In the end, Swine flu claimed the lives of 457 people in the UK.
COVID-19
Ferguson warned that COVID-19 might kill 250,000 people in the UK if lockdown measures were not enforced to slow its spread.[14] On 13th February he stated his predictive models were โnot absurd.โ[15] His computer program has been called a "buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming" and he used a 13 year old database to feed it.[16][17] Other analysis points out: "There are numerous bugs in the code and the documentation suggests to run it several times and take the average."[18]
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Neil_Ferguson