Neil Morris Ferguson is a British academic who specializes in the patterns of spread of infectious diseases in humans and animals. He heads the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and is the vice dean for academic development in the Faculty of Medicine at the Imperial College of London.

As you may recall, it was this Imperial College whose projection model pronounced that COVID-19 virus could kill 2.2 million Americans.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich offers a suggestion how a fruitless forecast so devoid of rhyme or reason could still fall in fertile soil: "Two generations of over-protecting our children, seeking safe places, announcing 'trigger warnings,' hyperventilating on social media, and having radio and TV starving for things to fill continuous 24/7 cycles, have all built up to a crescendo of noise."

Ferguson's projections were so "disconnected from common sense and reality," the former speaker continues, "[how was it] able to guide public policy? The truth is, we should have immediately expected these dire predictions to be complete bunk. It turns out the chief author, Neil Ferguson, has become famous for making wildly absurd predictions about public health issues. As the Committee To Unleash Prosperity reported in its newsletter, citing reporting by the British newspaper The Telegraph:

"Ferguson has been wrong so often that some of his fellow modelers call him 'The Master of Disaster.'

"Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of 11 million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. read more