How 'Professor Lockdown' helped save tens of thousands of lives worldwide — and carried COVID-19 into Downing Street

J-IDEA; Ruobing Su/Business Insider

• Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, authored a paper that prompted the UK to scrap its coronavirus strategy.
• Ferguson's team warned Boris Johnson that the quest for "herd immunity" could cost 510,000 lives, prompting an abrupt U-turn.
• His simulations have been influential in other countries as well, cited by authorities in the US, Germany, and France.
• During the pandemic, Ferguson caught COVID-19 himself. Around the same time, a wave of infections swept 10 Downing Street, hospitalizing Johnson.
• A competing model from the University of Oxford, and some criticism from contemporaries, is casting a shadow on his work and the government's reliance on modelling.
• Here's what we know about "Professor Lockdown" and the gold standard in science that is Imperial College.  
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

There has never been a more momentous era to be an epidemiologist.

The last 20 years have played host to a flurry of pathogen outbreaks; Foot and Mouth in 2001, SARS in 2003, Swine Flu in 2011, MERS in 2012, and Ebola and Zika in 2014.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

NOW WATCH: How the Navy's largest hospital ship can help with the coronavirus

See Also:

• A fringe movement that claims bleach is a miracle cure is jubilant after Trump floated injecting disinfectant as a treatment for COVID-19
• A leading disinfectant company urged people not to inject themselves with its products, hours after Trump said it might kill the coronavirus inside the human body
• A comprehensive timeline of the new coronavirus pandemic, from China's first COVID-19 case to the present

from Feedburner https://ift.tt/3azm7p9