Ferguson’s COVID-19 Study

Early on in the COVID-19 outbreak, Ferguson began to advise officials in Britain and the United States on the spread of the infection as well as ways to fight it. Thus, he served as both researcher and policy advisor at the same time.

Ferguson’s conclusion that COVID-19 would kill as many as 500,000 people in Britain and over 1.1 million in the United States, set off a tidal wave of panic that has not subsided. His policy recommendations were just as shocking, namely, that societies must be entirely locked down in order to survive.

On March 16, 2020, Ferguson finally released his formal report, Here are some quick observations from reading this report:

1.Well before publishing, he advised policy makers. His modeling study “informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in recent weeks”

2.Comparable to 1918 Spanish flu: “it represents the most serious seen in a respiratory virus since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic”

3.Applied this and previous model to UK and US: “we apply a previously published microsimulation model to two countries: the UK (Great Britain specifically) and the US”

4.There are two possible strategies: Mitigation and Suppression

Mitigation: This proposed social distancing, home-isolation of sick, home-quarantine of relatives, “We find that that optimal mitigation policies (combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half”

In spite of reducing deaths by half, “the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over”

Thus, he argues that Suppression is the only option

Suppression: Additional measures include social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of infected, household quarantine of family members, school and university closures

Long term: Suppression “will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more)”.