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1/ @Jonst0kes is understandably skeptical that one British academic could have single-handedly destroyed the American economy.
But that's more or less exactly what happened.
Meet Professor Neil Fergusson, the man responsible for the Imperial College London report. https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1263927765419597824
But that's more or less exactly what happened.
Meet Professor Neil Fergusson, the man responsible for the Imperial College London report. https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1263927765419597824
2/ Here's an excellent contemporaneous summary (thread): https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
3/ And here's an example of the conventional wisdom at the time regarding the Imperial College report on COVID-19: https://www.ft.com/content/16764a22-69ca-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75
4/ The Imperial College team began backpedaling from their apocalyptic predictions with the excuse that lockdowns had saved the day. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/imperial-college-scientist-who-predicted-500k-coronavirus-deaths-in-uk-revises-to-20k-or-less
5/ Skepticism with the Imperial College model led US policy makers to take a serious look at the competing Oxford models: https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/03/27/birx-imperial-college-model-vs-oxford-model-predictions-models-dont-match-reality-ground/
6/ And the backstory between the two teams is like something out of a soap opera. Prof Fergusson at Imperial College was once a colleague of Prof Sunetra Gupta, architect of the Oxford model. She won a legal settlement from him after sexual allegations: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8187123/How-rival-science-teams-born-sex-smear-splintered-academic-world.html
7/ Of course, Prof Fergusson is alleged to have been violating the lockdown orders his study inspired for the sake of a tryst. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11556697/professor-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaks-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-rules/
8/ I write hard science alternate history conspiracy techno-thrillers (on sale this weekend for only $0.99, by the way), and I'd be ashamed to have concocted so implausible a story. https://amzn.to/3eoPCwz
9/ And now it turns out - to the surprise of no one who was actually paying attention - that the Imperial College study was based on code that is a "buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming." https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327641/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html
10/ The only upside to this debacle is the obvious point that when our academic, scientific establishment got put to an actual, real-world test, the whole edifice collapsed like a house of cards. Anyone taking anything they say without a sizable grain of salt is delusional.
