The Telegraph: "Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time"

In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code.

But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.

~ David Richards and Constantin Boudnik, "Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time," The Telegraph, May 16, 2020

Rand Paul on experts like Neil Ferguson

We really need to have competition among the experts, because we had experts - particularly that guy [Neil] Ferguson over in England - saying it's going to be 2 million, best case a million.  Well this guy has gotten everything wrong for the past couple of decades.  He predicted mad cow disease would kill 136,000 and 177 people died.  So we have to take with a grain of salt these experts and their prognostications.  The future is very uncertain, but turning down and closing the entire economy has been devastating.  That's a fact.

~ Rand Paul, "Rand Paul on heated Senate exchange with Dr. Fauci," Fox News interview, 6:15 mark

Tom Woods on the Neil Ferguson resignation

Perhaps you know the name Neil Ferguson.

He has spent his life making wild predictions of doom. He said 200 million could die from bird flu; the grand total was 282 people. He said 65,000 people in the UK would die from swine flu. The actual number was 457.

And so on.

More to our current point, Ferguson is the man behind the COVID-19 models on the basis of which most of the world has shut down. According to his model the UK, where he lives, would have seen 500,000 deaths without radical interventions. Stay at home, he demanded. "Social distancing!"

Well.

It turns out that ol' Neil, rather than abide by the rules he would impose on others, believes he ought to be able to assess the risk level for himself.

We peons aren't allowed to make these determinations, of course. No, we have to stay home alone (even though in some states as well as in Europe around 50% of the deaths from COVID-19 are occurring in nursing homes).

But ol' Neil? He can have visitors.

Evidently he had a visitor quite recently.

His married lover stopped by. Twice.

Once after she had told friends that her husband may have been showing symptoms.

Oops.

Ferguson has stepped down from his government advisory position.

You really can't make this up.

These are the people running the world right now.

These are the people who have your neighbors scared out of their wits, to the point that they cannot have a rational conversation with you.

~ Tom Woods, May 5, 2020