{"id":215027,"date":"2020-10-15T06:44:04","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T06:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=215027"},"modified":"2020-10-18T07:33:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T07:33:31","slug":"academic-admits-to-making-wild-over-estimate-of-covid-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=215027","title":{"rendered":"Academic Admits To Making \u201cWild-Over-Estimate\u201d of Covid Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Introduction \u2013 Oct 14, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h5>Another &#8220;expert&#8221; who had been advising the British government on its response to Covid-19 has been forced to scale back his original estimate on the number deaths it would cause. Like Professor Neil Ferguson who had initially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-8327641\/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html\"><span style=\"color: #ffff00;\">warned that Covid could cause 500,000 deaths<\/span><\/a>, Professor Matt Keeling has admitted that his suggestion that 100,000 lives could be saved with a new lockdown was a wild over-estimate.<\/h5>\n<h5>So why are the authorities still listening to these so-called \u201cexperts\u201d when they\u2019ve been wrong, repeatedly? Or has the government, like many others around the world, already decided on lockdowns and they are simply using\u00a0 the likes of Professors Ferguson and Keeling as fall guys to take the heat for their policy?<\/h5>\n<h5>Apart from being instrumental in wrecking the economy and making possibly hundreds of thousands, even millions, jobless they are ruining science&#8217;s reputation. Once it was held in high esteem: it was seen infallible and beyond question. The way religion was seen in the middle ages.<\/h5>\n<h5>That is now changing thanks to the likes of Professors Ferguson and Keeling. Ed.<\/h5>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Academic behind startling &#8216;circuit breaker&#8217; study which found half-term lockdown could save up to 100,000 lives by New Year admit their death figures are wildly over-estimated and say they wish they&#8217;d never used them<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Professor Matt Keeling said he wished he &#8216;hadn&#8217;t put these numbers in the study&#8217;<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Paper said about 107,000 Britons could die by January without a circuit\u00a0breaker<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Study&#8217;s findings already been used as ammunition by scientists and politicians<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Sam Blanchard and Connor Boyd \u2013 Daily Mail Oct 14, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n<div id=\"attachment_215028\" style=\"width: 274px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Prof-Matt-Keeling.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-215028\" class=\"wp-image-215028\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Prof-Matt-Keeling.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"264\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Prof-Matt-Keeling.jpg 306w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Prof-Matt-Keeling-220x300.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 264px) 100vw, 264px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-215028\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Professor Matt Keeling\u00a0suggested thousands of lives could be saved if the country goes into a circuit breaker over half term.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The academic behind a startling study which projected a two-week &#8216;circuit-breaker&#8217; could save thousands of lives by New Year has today admitted his figures were wildly over-estimated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In the paper, Professor\u00a0Matt Keeling &#8211; from the\u00a0Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which feeds data into SAGE &#8211; suggested more than 100,000 British lives could be spared by January if the country shuts down over half-term.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">But the Warwick University epidemiologist admitted today he wished he &#8216;hadn&#8217;t put these numbers in the study&#8217; because it was an extreme scenario that was only included &#8216;for illustration&#8217;. The Government&#8217;s official Covid-19 death toll only puts the death toll so far at 43,000, by comparison.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The finding was based on the assumption that all lockdown measures currently in place would be lifted, leaving the virus unchecked\u00a0from now until January.\u00a0Professor Keeling noted in the paper that this worst-case scenario would never be allowed to play out without the Government intervening.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">However, the paper&#8217;s findings have already been used as ammunition by those calling for the mini-lockdown, including Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Government&#8217;s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has for weeks been pleading with ministers to impose a national circuit-breaker but their demands were overruled by Boris Johnson amid fears it would &#8216;shatter&#8217; the economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Mr Johnson today dismissed calls for the measure, which he branded &#8216;miserable&#8217;, in a brutal clash with Mr Starmer in the Commons and\u00a0insisted that his job was to balance the economic and wider interests of the country with the science.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The PM admitted he will &#8216;rule out nothing&#8217; in the bid to stop coronavirus but stood by his tiered local lockdown approach in which areas with the highest infection rates face the toughest rules. He said the three-level local system &#8216;can drive down and will drive down the virus if it is properly implemented&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-8838727\/Academics-circuit-breaker-study-admit-death-figures-estimated.html\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First Prof. Neil Ferguson warned that Covid could kill 500,000 in the UK. Now Prof. Matt Keeling has backtracked after claiming a new lockdown could save 100,000 lives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215027"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215067,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215027\/revisions\/215067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}