May 20, 2020 - 12:06pm
We spoke to Prof Neil Ferguson before his fall from grace, so it felt only fair to hear from the other Niall Ferguson — famous historian, writer, academic — who was one of the first to call the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic in the British press.
He joined us from his mountain cabin in Montana, and shared his thoughts on lockdown, the Asian century, Donald Trump’s re-election prospects and the dangers ahead for Boris Johnson. Hope you enjoy.
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Subscribethe analysis of the errors in UK and US pandemic policy is plausible – until you consider other Asian cases than China, Taiwan, S’pore and HK. In particular, what about Japan which has only had a half-arsed lockdown and no serious testing or contact-tracing either? Moreover, the SE Asian countries seem to have got off fairly lightly too – notably Thailand, which is a favoured destination of PRC tourists? The truth is that there is some as-yet-undiscovered factor here – environmental or genetic (possibly the same one that explains the excessive morbidity and mortality among certain ethnic groups in UK)
Maybe the reports of a lockdown if true in a Wuhan lab (based on phone location records) in October 2019, some bad colds going around in November\December and reports we were entering a worse than usual flu season which then morphed into covid-19 is something to do with it? Maybe some places had already had their excess deaths and some immunity before it started to be identified as something new.Lots to still investigate to get to the bottom of this.
There are multiple examples of genetic susceptibility to specific strains of virus in indivuduals who are otherwise indistinguishable by phenotype (obvious physical examination findings) or confounding illness. A good example is dilating cardiomyopathy where the heart expands following viral illness and can cause death or transplantation (essentially death). This is a rare but routine illness which is seen in every hospital in every country. It has a more favourable outcome in women but beyond that the molecular mecahnism is obscure. There are multiple examples of disease senstivity statistically associoated or confounded by ethnicity. This is neither new nor remarkable science.
Could it be sunlight and temperature? India still has a very low fatality per capita and has all the factors, which are being pointed at to explain why our BAME community appears to be more affected, amplified many times. Africa similarly has hardly been touched. Is UK infection falling due to longer warmer days? What would that mean for the autumn / winter when other health pressures return?
Contact tracing only really works when infection rates are low. I worry that we are wasting the summer months being far too cautious emerging from lockdown that we will miss the opportunity to gain a decent level of herd immunity in the working age population.
I am normally in agreement with Niall Ferguson but he seems to be unaware of recent polling coming out of the swing states in the US, and of two recent special elections – or by-elections as we call them – for Congress.
A recent CNN poll showed Trump leading by some margin in all the key swing states. Moreover, the Republicans recently flipped a Congress seat in California (of all places!) with a 21-point swing while also winning a crushing victory in Wisconsin. At a state level, the Reps just won three seats in Philadelphia by a large margin. Remarkably, the CA vote was mail in, although the Dems desperately erected a physical polling booth when they saw the results coming in.
Trump’s approval rate is currently higher than that of both G.W. (MD) Bush and Obama at this stage of their presidencies, and in one poll he achieved 51%, although that is very much an outlier.
There is also the issue of the so-called stealth Trump voters. These are the equivalent of shy Tories. They tend to mislead pollsters and they are very likely to vote.
Niall Ferguson is a very eloquent performer but was wide of the mark in one of his previous predictions on Brexit that I read (with the benefit of hindsight). An historian is someone who reviews information from the past and constructs a narrative around it. Why would a historian be any better than anyone else in making predictions. I agree with you that the “quiet” Trump voters are more numerous than most people can fathom. Victor Davis Hanson makes this point very well.
Niall Ferguson complains about Neil Ferguson’s predictions, but Neil F’s team assumed a 0.9% IFR and Niall F. is suggesting a 0.5% to 0.7% IFR.
Niall Ferguson is proposing a herd immunity strategy, but 80% infected of 65 million at his IFR rates suggest deaths of 260,000 to 364,000 which is more than Neil F’s team predicted with mitigation.
How come no one asks these herd immunity proposers about the maths?
There’s also several studies which predict an IFR of above 1%.
Everyone likes to pick on Neil Ferguson’s model, but the numbers are what they are. He was wildly pessimistic about the US, and I do fault our politicians for thinking UK projections were at all relevant to a vastly larger country where everyone drives everywhere.
For the UK however he forecast up to 48,000 deaths with the current lockdown measures in place and a pre-social distancing r0 of 2.6. The UK has currently recorded 36k deaths. I think excess death numbers point to something closer to 55k.
Let’s assume you are correct and we get a ‘body count’ of say 364,000.
Nearly 90% of these will be either old (65+) or, to use the vernacular knackered, or in many cases both.
In view the economic Armageddon being inflicted on the ‘young’ is this hysterical panic the nation seems to have opted for, really worth it?
Off course not, yet like the proverbial gandarene swine, we and most of the once civilised world are hurtling off the cliff into the pit of darkness, mass unemployed, civil disobedience, deprivation, poverty, misery and so on, and ultimately a major atomic war.
Consummatum est.
Fortunately, many of the young are more kindly disposed towards their grandparents than you are.
Yes I happen to be a very ancient grandparent, and am frankly horrified by the mawkish sentimentality that seems to infect the ‘young’.
What is even worse worse, it was ‘my’ generation, plus a couple of previous ones that turned them into the cretins they appear to be.
Frankly ‘we’ were too busy hedonistically plundering the planet to notice what was going on, in State Education for example.
What we sowed by indolence we are now reaping with a vengeance.
Mea culpa.
when discussing ( fairly) the flaws in the UK response he references the “good” performance of Germany but seemingly ignores Italy Spain & France ??
Wow … it is not that I am unfamiliar with this particular Ferguson. But what supreme arrogance, coupled with lack of knowledge critical to the topic, he displays.
The latitude of Taipei is 25 deg, whereas that of Stockholm is 59 deg. There is an enormous difference in vit D status between two such societies, and the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) host-defence is of unusually large importance wrt SARS-CoV-2 and CoVID-19. Vit D insufficiency which is predominant to an increasing degree with increasing latitudes in winter, dysregulates and degrades AMPs.
If governments and their bureaucracies were not so joined at the hip with commercial interests such as the pharmaceuticals industry a major public policy initiative should be promote oral supplementation during the summer lull (in contagion) — beginning immediately. This would save (or prolong) a huge number of lives due not only to CoVID-19 but also influenza which is a much more serious seasonal endemic virus for which pharmaceutical interventions are already extant and mature.
Is the relatively trivial amount of CoVID-19 in India due to their masterful public policy or latitude? India has a long history of stronger intrinsic immunity to respiratory viral contagions than more northerly countries with more capable health infrastructures.
I would suggest to any skeptics who have not studied the topic as I have, watch CoVID-19 in Australia as they get into their winter. They will have had hugely more time for preparation than northern-hemisphere countries — a big advantage.
A country such as Taiwan had enormous built-in advantages:
a. in being heavily linked to mainland China in culture, business, travel and proximity
b. in having had a major SARS epidemic and since then building epidemic-response infrastructure
c. in being an island state
d. in their tropical latitude
e. in their superior understanding of the CCP, gained through decades of hostility by the communists which no other country on earth has yet experienced
There is no possibility that any nation on earth can indefinitely contain this virus — not even China, much less a free country. So any argument that a success like Taiwan’s (so far) will “save lives” as Ferguson unskeptically states would require several assumptions and goals yet to be achieved:
1. Suppression of contagion must remain significantly successful until some combination of new vaccines and/or therapeutics are developed, tested, and widely administered amongst the populace.
2. The yet-to-be-realized vaccines and/or therapeutics must be significantly successful for CoVID-19.
3. The pharmaceutical methods must largely replace the function of human host-defence systems programmed into our genome by evolution, which have ended all previous epidemics in human history rather handily and are already well on the way with this one, although there will be more seasons after the 1st of lesser and lesser significance, I would expect. The more time we wait for the pharma solutions, the less impact they will have as herd immunity continues to build.
4. The lockdown and quarantine measures must not cost more lives than CoVID-19 would have with less restrictive policies.
For a historian such as Ferguson, it is interesting that he delays so long in mentioning the Spanish flu, a massively more virulent pandemic that societies took in stride while finishing off WWI.
Meanwhile, there is no example in history of anything like what he so blithely proposes.
Ferguson seems completely overmatched by this topic.
Ferguson is absolutely correct about the built-in problem of government bureaucracies. Pray tell, however, how would he solve that problem? CDC in the USA failed massively and delayed introduction of antigen testing while furiously and irresponsibly protecting their turf. And they are not too bad as bureaucratic agencies go! President Trump understands the problem implicitly, but unlike Ferguson he has the problem of actually dealing with the deep state.
The problem with contact tracing acceptance is that it is being weaponized by Public Health Officers. If one is ‘tagged’ as having been exposed, mandatory quarantine and isolation for 14 days ensues. There is no information about how many times a single person can be subjected to this requirement nor whether or not someone who has recovered from the virus is exempt in the future. Citizens are being victimized by unnecessary and arbitrary Public Health Orders leading to distrust of the entire apparatus. I know I will be at death’s door before I willingly even consent to a test and in turn victimize anyone I may have been in contact with over 14 days.
I am not sure how much faith you can place in the data provided by various countries, so making comparisons is not as simple as you might like it to be. I recently read that the UK was one of the only countries in Europe counting deaths occurring in hospitals, care homes, AND at home. Recently the state of Colorado has reduced their number of deaths from the virus by 30%. Elon Musk pointed out that in the USA hospitals received money from the government for every case they reported. With the best will in the world, this money must have prompted US hospitals to over-report their cases. I don’t believe that we will be able to determine which country has performed “best” for at least another 12 months or so. Then again that country may have reduced deaths but performed worse on the economy. We must wait and see.
Wow … it is not that I am unfamiliar with this particular Ferguson. But what supreme arrogance, coupled with lack of knowledge critical to the topic, he displays.
The latitude of Taipei is 25 deg, whereas that of Stockholm is 59 deg. There is an enormous difference in vit D status between two such societies, and the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) host-defence is of unusually large importance wrt SARS-CoV-2 and CoVID-19. Vit D insufficiency which is predominant to an increasing degree with increasing latitudes in winter, dysregulates and degrades AMPs.
If governments and their bureaucracies were not so joined at the hip with commercial interests such as the pharmaceuticals industry a major public policy initiative should promote oral supplementation — beginning immediately. This would save (or prolong) a huge number of lives due not only to CoVID-19 but also influenza which is a much more serious seasonal endemic virus for which pharmaceutical interventions are already extant and mature.
Is the relatively trivial amount of CoVID-19 in India due to their masterful public policy, or to latitude? India has a long history of stronger intrinsic immunity to respiratory viral contagions than more northerly countries with more capable health infrastructures and wealth.
I would suggest to any skeptics who have not studied the topic as I have, watch CoVID-19 in Australia as they get into their winter. They will have had hugely more time for preparation than northern-hemisphere countries — a big advantage.
A country such as Taiwan had enormous built-in advantages:
a. in being heavily linked to mainland China in culture, business, travel and proximity
b. in having had a major SARS epidemic and since then building epidemic-response infrastructure
c. in being an island state
d. in their tropical latitude
e. in their superior understanding of the CCP, gained through decades of hostility by the communists which no other country on earth has yet experienced
There is no possibility that any nation on earth can indefinitely contain this virus — not even China, much less a free country. So any argument that a success like Taiwan’s (so far) will “save lives” as Ferguson unskeptically states would require several assumptions and goals yet to be achieved:
1. Suppression of contagion must remain significantly successful until some combination of new vaccines and/or therapeutics are developed, tested, and widely administered amongst the populace.
2. The yet-to-be-realized vaccines and/or therapeutics must then be significantly successful for CoVID-19.
3. The pharmaceutical methods must largely replace the function of human host-defence systems programmed into our genome by evolution, which have ended all previous epidemics in human history rather handily and are already well on the way with this one, although there will be more seasons after the 1st of lesser and lesser significance, I would expect. The more time we wait for the pharma solutions, the less impact they will have as herd immunity continues to build.
4. The lockdown and quarantine measures must not cost more lives than CoVID-19 would have with less restrictive policies.
For a historian such as Ferguson, it is interesting that he does not mention the Spanish flu, a massively more virulent pandemic that societies took in stride while finishing off WWI.
Meanwhile, there is no example in history of anything like what he so blithely proposes.
Ferguson seems completely overmatched by this topic.
P.S. I would add also that the overcoming of deeply-rooted cultural norms implicit in what Ferguson refers to as “smart” country policies, as dubious as they already are, seems a non-starter and for very good reasons. Life and cultures and policy involve complex tradeoffs and Ferguson presumes to make these for the rest of us — the very essence of an academic.
NO true epidemiologist uses homogeneous population models — Ferguson is wrong. Heterogeneity is absolutely fundamental to epidemiological modeling. There may be a lot of people out there calling themselves epidemiologists these days, but Ferguson should recognize the difference.
In speculating that Swedish children might yet exhibit some unrealized susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, Ferguson seems unaware of stunning evidence already in the bag that children are not only insignificantly at risk, but do NOT transmit virus at all! This is in complete contrast to flu. Nothing could be more epidemiologically and biologically significant. Is Ferguson unaware of the Icelandic study, Swiss studies, and so forth?
Seems to me that this stark contrast between two respiratory viruses is knowledge to further build upon and exploit, and absolutely key in understanding SARS-CoV-2 and intelligently managing this particular virus. Ferguson goes off the rails.
Interesting article.
However, I doubt that the coronavirus will have had a major effect on the majority of the armed forces. Exercises and training gets cancelled and moved all the time, and most personnel are accustomed to being away in effective lockdown conditions on exercises, on tours or at sea for those unfortunate enough to have been quarantined or gated directly as a result of the virus.
You highlight a few other points though that are more problematic for the armed forces. The example of the submarine captain is one prime example. At a time when most of the armed forces are not deployed or on major operations, incidents like that get overblown. Commanders have to try and get through their respective postings event-free to get a good report and promote. Making the papers has meant that commander’s actions have likely cost him his career, even though he most certainly did the right thing for the morale of the people in his command. Nobody in defence seems to question whether his actions really mattered or seem to realise that the vast majority of the public couldn’t care less if some sailors get drunk (shocker!) when they come into port.
Due to this fear at all levels of command, for an increasing number of armed forces personnel their time served is spent visiting far flung places but with limited freedom to do, see or experience anything. They see the world from the inside of a gated camp that looks much like any, all out of fear of any misdemeanours and the bad press it might incur. This constant policing of fun drains the already dwindling morale of members of the armed forces.
Back on your main point, the cancellation of a few large exercises and training deployments will likely have limited effect. Larger exercises tend to benefit commands rather than soldiers and can be conducted easily without deploying exercising troops. Soldiers (and i assume sailors and airmen) get more benefit from small scale training that focuses on their key skills, whereas large exercises are dictated by large scale moves and planning that tends to mean long periods of inaction and even huge doses of unrealism for troops on the ground as the agenda is set for the purposes of big scale planning.
As a final note – the small training deployment in Iraq – such a deployment looks good on a powerpoint in joint headquarters but arguably has limited practical value in terms of defence engagement or effect on allies. True it’s better to be involved than not at all, and the main value will be for the personnel who are at least deployed doing a real job rather than repeating the same exercises in the UK on rotation.
Good interview and analysis, coherent and well presented. Yes, the UK has unfortunately handled the pandemic very poorly. Our experts, government, civil service and quangos should be ashamed and humbled by the disaster they have and are inflicting upon us. Now is a time for dramatic change to all these bodies, we need to have a massive reduction in the numbers of people and groups involved and employed. Start with abolishing PHE etc.
The assertion that nearly all countries around the world are following the same trajectory regardless of lock down needs to be challenged. There is now a growing epidemic in many South American countries.
Belarus also sees growing cases – now ahead of UK for total confirmed cases per capita and still growing on a similar per capita testing level. The interesting thing about Belarus is it has a remarkably low CFR, which cannot be accounted for when you look at the risk and natural mitigation factors (eg high proportion of smokers particularly amongst men – little publicised but smoking seems to give better outcomes when infected). The low CFR might have something to do with living with decades of higher background radiation due to Cernobyl, but it seems likely that Belarus is fudging its death figures by marking them down to Pneumonia (a symptom of Covid and other diseases). Chatham House published some evidence that this was occurring. However there is no doubt that Belarus still has a growing epidemic, having not locked down when the rest of Europe is seeing new cases diminishing day by day.