Ferguson has record of making stupid worst-case predictions about the threat of new viruses. Bill cites “what Prof. Gold Standard said in 2005 about the projected Bird Flu death toll to the Guardian”:
Last month Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical 1 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/the-ferguson-effect.php

2 biology at Imperial College London, told Guardian Unlimited that up to 200 million people could be killed. “Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,” said Prof Ferguson. “There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around

3) 200 million people probably.”
A Department of Health contingency plan states anywhere that there could be between 21,500 and 709,000 deaths in Britain.” The Bird Flu’s death toll from 2003 to 2020 is 455.

4 Dr. Ferguson was equally off with his death projections for mad cow disease. He made big headlines in the United Kingdom by predicting that mad cow disease could kill between 50 and 50,000. Bill writes: “Millions of cows were slaughtered.

5 But to be fair, his scientific ‘model’ was right. The death toll [is 178 to date].” “From 2M to less than 100K? C'mon, man.”

6 “Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,” said Prof Ferguson. “There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.” “That there is some high level math”

“...predicting that mad cow disease could kill between 50 and 50000
Difficult to be wrong in that estimate. 178 fits nicely "between.".
This guy is right up there with Ehrlich & Krugman.”

8 “Ferguson has likely put a five trillion dollar dent in the world economy. The U.S. will recover nicely, the U.K. will survive, some countries in Europe will face an ongoing struggle for a long time, and China may well be looking at a depression that makes 1929

9 ... look like the good old days. China deserves it. The rest of the world not so much.”

10 “Why do you think Michael Mann exists? Same for Ferguson. The raise huge amounts of grant money for their universities. They deliver exactly no worth to the rest of the world but they pay the salaries of a bunch of equally worthless admins.”

“Q: Why does the government keep listening to Ferguson when he is so wrong so often?
A: His projections help them advance their political agenda.”

“Computer models are NOT science. They are, at best, predictions based on a theory which is, in turn, based on some science. When the predictions prove wrong, we should throw out the theories they were based upon, and then go back and try again with better theories next time...”