Neil Ferguson admits that UK's lockdown had the same effect as Sweden's policy (and the US/UK media ignore it)
Mark Crispin Miller
By Jason O’Toole, who has worked as a senior feature writer for the Irish Daily Mail, a columnist with the Irish Sunday Mirror and senior editor of Hot Press magazine. He’s also the author of several best-selling books.
Professor Neil Ferguson probably woke up this morning breathing a massive sigh of relief because he hadn’t been ripped to shreds again in the British newspapers for this second time in just under a month – this time over his startling admission that there has been no significant difference in the levels of Covid-19 suppression when comparing the UK and Sweden.
During his evidence to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on Tuesday, he said: “They [Swedish scientists] came to a different policy conclusion based really on quite similar science. I don’t agree with it but scientifically they’re not far from scientists in any part of the world.”
He then acknowledged that the Swedish authorities had “got a long way to the same effect” without a full lockdown.
In other words, in the type of roundabout waffling way you’d expect from a bumbling boffin, the scientist – dubbed ‘Professor Lockdown’ after he cajoled Boris Johnson into bringing the British economy to a screeching halt – reckons Sweden has essentially coped very well without being forced into any draconian lockdown, thank you very much.
So where was the indignation about how his recommendations f**ked up the economy and made people prisoners in their own homes? It certainly wasn’t to be seen splashed across any British front pages. Indeed, it was hard enough to find much, if any, coverage of this very significant news story on Wednesday.
It was buried inside the Daily Telegraph on page seven, running across a third of a page or less, with a very accurate subheading stating in clear black and white: “Professor admits radical Scandinavian policy worked as well as British policy of shutting down.”
Click on the link for the rest.