A scientist who warned that 500,000 people will die in Britain if it does nothing to tackle the Covid pandemic has rejected calls for the country to go into lockdown.
Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, admitted during the UK Covid-19 study that he had “stepped away from his role as a scientific adviser to the government” to “focus on the gravity of the situation”. when the virus hit the country in March 2020.
However, he insisted he did not ask officials to isolate the country. Speaking at the inquest on Tuesday, he said the situation was “much more complex”.
Professor Ferguson gave a press conference on 16 March 2020 in which he discussed a paper he co-authored which suggested that 500,000 people would die in the UK if action was not taken. This was quickly cited as the reason why the government imposed a UK lockdown a week later.
However, Professor Ferguson described the scenario as “unlikely” at a press conference and said the “worst-case scenario would never happen” as a backlash was inevitable.
Without radical change, 260,000 people would die, he said at the time, based on the government’s original plan to “soften” the outbreak rather than try to stop it. If the country goes into quarantine, “tens of thousands” will die.
There have been 230,000 deaths with Covid on the death certificate in the UK since the start of the pandemic. Not all of them are caused by a virus. According to official data, about 55.5 thousand people were registered in the first three months of the pandemic.
Senior Advocate Hugo Keith K.S. asked Professor Ferguson: “Do you feel that you have limited yourself to providing scientific advice or, despite your best efforts, have you become irrevocably involved in policy-making?”
Prof Ferguson, nicknamed “Professor Lockdown” because of the modeling paper, said the question was “difficult to answer”.
Headline: “I know I’m very involved in certain politics. But as you know from the evidence I presented in my statement and testimony, the reality was much more complex.
“I don’t think I’ve crossed that line to say, ‘This is what we need to do now.’ Sometimes I tried – and this was a step beyond the role of a scientific adviser – to try to draw people’s attention to what was about to happen and the consequences of current trends.”
In May 2020, Professor Ferguson quit his position as a consultant at Sage, the scientific advisory group for emergencies, two months after he was caught breaking social distancing rules to meet his married lover.
He remained a committee member of the Scientific Panel on Pandemic Influenza Modeling (SPI-M) and the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag).
Earlier, another scientist told the inquiry that the number of Covid deaths in the UK could have been reduced during the first wave of the pandemic if the country had gone into lockdown just two weeks earlier.
Professor Stephen Riley, who works for Britain’s Health Security Agency but was at Imperial College London at the time, said the lockdown should have been introduced on March 9, 2020, rather than March 23. The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.
He said data has since shown that people began changing their behavior around March 16, a few days before the stay-at-home order. But measures should have been taken earlier, he added.
“In my opinion, the first nationwide period of strict social distancing (lockdown) should have been introduced on or about March 9, 2020,” he wrote in his testimony to the inquiry.
Asked to explain this, he said: “Once we had laboratory-confirmed deaths in intensive care units (ICUs) with no travel history and no clear link to social media abroad, even a few of them would suggest we do it.” “Our epidemic will develop quickly.”
He added: “We have a lot of data on how social interaction changed over this period, and basically it looks like around March 16, everyone started changing their behavior.”
“I think the best way to talk about this is to say: If we had gotten the mixing down that quickly before the 16th, the height of the peak would have been lower and the area under the curve for the first wave would have been lower. “were smaller. and perhaps much less. And the area under the curve is proportional to the number of deaths very roughly, but usefully.”
The London Study is now in its second module, exploring the essence of British decision-making and political governance.
Meanwhile, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists accused the government of failing to sufficiently address the needs of pregnant women during the pandemic.
In its evidence to the inquiry, the board cited confusing messages to pregnant women in the early stages of the pandemic.
The council also noted that the insistent message to “stay at home” had an impact on a number of pregnant women. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many missed routine important appointments or did not seek help when they felt their children’s freedom of movement was restricted.
Source: I News
I’m Raymond Molina, a professional writer and journalist with over 5 years of experience in the media industry. I currently work for 24 News Reporters, where I write for the health section of their news website. In my role, I am responsible for researching and writing stories on current health trends and issues. My articles are often seen as thought-provoking pieces that provide valuable insight into the state of society’s wellbeing.