YouSaid · the spoken record

Neil Ferguson

lines on the record: 40
first: 2020-06-26
most recent: 2020-06-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It is exciting to undertake scientific research at such rapidity in real time and we were the first group to really give a proper assessment of the scale of the outbreak in Wuhan back when the Chinese were reporting a half a dozen cases we estimated there had to be thousands and then the first group to estimate the severity of this virus what proportion of people who get infected might die. And whilst all of those estimates were subject to a lot of uncertainty and since then have been improved and revised, I think they have turned out to be basically right. It feels good to make a difference, frankly, regardless of the political controversy and everything else. It feels good to be contributing to something which is clearly so important. We want to understand how diseases spread in population.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, very little so far. The odd day, occasional weekends since about mid January, everybody involved in the response effort all the way from hospital, doctors and nurses through to kind of policy side, it has been a truly exhausting few months.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would do in a different way, say in a different way if I could go over things again with the benefit of hindsight. But fundamentally, I think both I and actually everybody I've been working with, both in my own institution, other universities and within government, throughout this crisis have been doing the very best they can do with very limited data. So I'm, I suppose, less concerned about person reputation and I don't think inquiries in this context would serve much purpose attributing personal blame on individuals. I think where we can learn lessons though is how systems can work better, what structural things could be done better. So even the kind of failure to set up testing, I wouldn't lay at any individual's door, but there were clearly some structural failures which led us to being quite so slow.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I've worked in these sort of situations before. Mike Ryan, Deputy Director of World Health Organization, has a nice line on this and paraphrasing him. I can't remember the line precisely. It's best to be half right and quick than fully right but slow. If I look back, I mean there are certainly things”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a balancing act in terms of the timing of inquiry between people's memories and it being fresh in the mind and it being And distracting from policy, I think right now people still are very heavily engaged in managing this epidemic on our exit from lockdown and setting up systems such as the track and trace system, understanding what is going on. But I think towards the end of this year would be about the sort of time I think it would be appropriate to look back. I mean, I think some lessons can be learned more quickly, but if we're talking about a very systematic, whether it's a public inquiry or whether it's something slightly less expensive and long-winded, but any sort of official inquiry is inevitably going to be highly disruptive. And so, I mean, I think we probably need to wait a little bit longer.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the problems with this virus is it's quite hard for some people to recognize symptoms. It's like tickle in the throat, it's like dryness or whatever. It can often take people 24 hours to recognize. I was particularly sensitized plus I got that first hint actually giving an interview that morning. And so because I was working at home anyhow, I didn't have to go into the office. I didn't and then symptoms got much worse 24 hours later when I had quite a high fever. So I was as fortunate but I'm definitely not going to criticise people for kind of being complacent. I think all the people I've been working with have been very sensitive to the need to isolate if they get infected. I think it's just some people just didn't recognise what they had.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not going to name any names. I was not the first person to get infected in the entire set of people to get infected. No, it's not something I've really thought of. I isolated as soon as I had the faintest hint of symptoms. It would have been unfortunate if I infected any bit before that, but I did everything I could to avoid that.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, quite a number of people in SAGE and in the Department of Health and Social Care came down in those two weeks, including indeed ministers. Exactly what you might expect of people being shut up in airless rooms together for hours and end and working despite fill in not terribly well.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Potentially, yes. Though hopefully in a much more evidence-based way so that in a way which we can really maximize the impact of the interventions and minimize how disruptive they are.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we just need to look around Europe at the kind of clusters of cases popping up in different contexts to have a good understanding of what we might expect to see here after 4th of July. I don't expect to see a kind of uniform, very large growth of cases across the country. What I do expect to see, depending on how sensible people are, how much they judge the risks themselves and reduce those risks, is clusters of cases, outbreaks in some individual facilities for instance, like food production plants, but also maybe in kind of social contexts, particular workplaces, particular schools. And we will be playing in some sense a game of not a particularly nice metaphor, but whack-a-mole, of trying to suppress those outbreaks. I think as we go into the autumn and winter, there's bigger potential risk of more wide scale widespread.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We just can't model that. It would be a complete guesswork. We just don't have a nuanced enough understanding of the risk of transmission. I'm hoping that will change in the next few months. One real benefit of the test and trace system is it gives a lot more detailed data on who is getting infected, which professions, which industries pose most risk of infection. You'll have heard, for instance, meatpacking plants and food production facilities appear to be a particular risk. But we'd like to know much more about that. Is it really a risk to go to the cinema, for instance? We need those data before we can then make forward predictions about the likely effect of policy changes. Right now, we are experimenting, frankly. I mean, I don't disagree with the policy changes analysis this week, but I would say we need to”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, yes, I mean, I say it's never been just I. I mean, the imperial group I had, the center I had, continues to feed into UK policy making and policymaking around the world. I think the nature of the questions have changed now, and in some sense are more difficult to give unambiguous answers to the uncertainties around this virus are huge, particularly around exactly where does transmission occur, what sorts of contacts pose the most risk. And I think the focus is shifting, therefore, away from although nothing policy making to much more nuanced evaluation of different policy options. And really for that, we need better data.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them to ramp up testing to a degree and implement those measures that it would have been for the UK epita to have done in March timeframe.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the specific issue of kind of testing and tracing, I mean that I think it's widely accepted. I mean, was a significant failure of the UK response in terms of our failure to ramp up testing to a level which would even allow that to be a policy option. We're only just getting to the point now where large-scale community contact tracing and testing is feasible. Had we had that as a policy option much earlier on, then perhaps things might have been different. But there's an important distinction between South Korea and the UK. I mean, what we now know is that by probably mid to late February, the UK had been ceded with far more infections with COVID than people infected with COVID than South Korea ever was. South Korea was in some sense very lucky to pick up infection at an early point, where it was much easier for”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I cannot imagine either of them would have done that. The issue not so much about framing advice for policy makers, it's more than perhaps the other way around that given the particular government's perspective on talk about compulsion versus voluntary measures, then that shapes the commissions coming to sage of what they want looked at. What are the questions being asked of the scientists? Because what we don't do is just go off on our own and say, come to Sage and say, this is the policy you should adopt. It's far from that. What we often do is we get asked, you know, what might be the effectiveness of this or closing schools now, of recommending people who are ill stay at home, whole set of measures. And we go away and assess the evidence, in some cases do modelling and come back and say, these are the sort of effects you might expect to see rather than say this is what you should do.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did because I viewed it as an indication that number 10 were taking it the epidemic much more seriously. And I mean, actually, I think Sir Patrick and Chris Whitty do an excellent job, but we were the ones who were actually working on the data. And so there can be a benefit of that kind of interaction of people like John Edmonds and myself directly looking across the table and saying, do you know this is what's going to happen? I do have the greatest respect for both Sir Patra and Chris Whitty. It's just, it is one step removed from the people doing the analysis.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sound the same in France as well with President Macron. It's interesting that the way the Scottish equivalent of sages now operating is that on occasion the First Minister does actually attend those meetings. There were downsides to that. I mean, you will remember the controversy around Dominic Cummings attending SAGE meetings and the idea that somehow that could compromise scientific independence. So there clearly are potential downsides to having direct political involvement in that sort of advisory structure. But in certain circumstances, I wonder whether there might be upsides as well.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it doesn't operate like that. I mean, there's pluses and minuses. I think on balance, it's a plus. It means that if you get one particularly well known or charismatic or whatever scientist, they don't unduly influence policy. I think our system has a lot of checks and balances. It ensures that the advice which goes through to policy is really based on the consensus of many, many scientists. The downside, perhaps, is it's a little more cumbersome, a little slower in its operation, and maybe a little more conservative in terms of how quickly policy can pivot. So if you compare it with how policy has been made in many European countries in this crisis, then that was based on small groups of scientists largely directly talking to ministers in many cases. And of course those countries moved faster.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sat in one press conference and didn't exchange any words. I mean, that's not how science advice works in the UK. Independent academics don't get to meet ministers. We have a deliberate system whereby all scientific advice goes through committees headed by chairs. I mean, SAGE is chaired by the Chief Scientific Advisor, Patrick Gallance and Chris Whittie, the Chief Medical Officer, and they are the interlocutors with policymakers. I've never directly communicated with a politician during this epidemic.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of it. So that evolved over time. In the UK initially, we've only tested four cases in travellers, I'm talking back in February and in early March. And we looked at that. We were seeing a doubling of cases about every four or five days or so. However, by the time we issued our famous report on lockdown or on suppression versus mitigation, we were looking in that modelling exercise at doubling times between about three and a half and four and a half days, so maybe a little too slow, but we already by that point realized the thing was moving faster than we had done, say, at the beginning of that month, beginning of March.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. I mean, we know that in retrospect once surveillance really got up to speed in hospitals, we really appreciated how much infection was here. I mean, people talk about the epidemic doubling every two days back in early March, first two weeks of March. It probably really wasn't doubling every two days. What was happening is testing was being ramped up and we were seeing an apparent, very rapid increase, which was just, as we tested more for infection, we were finding more of it.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I wasn't saying that. I mean, there was increasing body of evidence built up from really Febrary onwards about the severity of this disease and then about the extent to which the UK had been affected. It's unfortunate, and I think one lesson we can I think had we known that, then decisions clearly would have been made faster.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, it was interpreted, my comment as being an implicit criticism of the government. It wasn't really intended that. I think it benefits us all and scientists in particular to think back as to what lessons can be learned and what can be done better next time. And it's undoubtedly true that given the epidemic was growing, doubling every four days or so, that had we acted earlier, many lives would have been saved. The issue of why didn't we act earlier is a much more complicated one, and one actually I don't feel very able to give an objective opinion on. I mean, I think that is something for people to reflect on through a kind of more objective inquiry in the fullness of time.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that risk can be communicated, it doesn't need a very complicated model. I mean, we were facing a disease where the epidemic was doubling every four days or so and where 1% of those who get infected die. And it was those simple statistics which really, as the numbers firmed up and as the government became more persuaded that that was really what we were facing, I think it was that which determined policy.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it couldn't really be further from the truth. First of all, there was nothing in that paper the government wasn't already aware of previous weeks. Also, it wasn't just that paper, it wasn't just the work of my group at Imperial College, it was the work of multiple groups. I mean, I've mentioned before London School of Hygienical Medicine, but really epidemiological analysis and modelling has its own advisory committee in the UK system. And there was a very broad consensus in terms of what level of risk we were facing.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's not just me. I mean, a lot of scientists who've been publicly identified with the lockdown both in this country and in the United States and other European countries have been subject to really quite vitriolic attacks, both personal emails and in the media. And I think that is one of the most regrettable aspects of what's happened.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people say things in the heat of the moment. I should say, I mean, I got clearly I got some fewer angry messages after all that happened than I was getting before that happened, but I've actually been touched by how understanding and forgiving people are both all the way from different parts of government, MPs and just random strangers contacting me saying how sorry they were. So yeah, I mean, I'm not going to make comments on what ministers said and on a particular morning and people have been under a lot of pressure. I'm glad it's behind me now and certainly I understand how people feel disappointed.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a hard thing to think back to. I'd been kind of on my own for two weeks. I think it wasn't even so much decision. It was a kind of slight relief that I got infected with coronavirus recovered perfectly well. I had been tested and UI was there for very unlikely to get infected again and wouldn't pose a risk to others. I don't think I was working very long hours and not really connected to the bee, you're not watching news or anything and hadn't been out. So it was more a matter of being very disconnected from the world except for working all the time than a conscious decision to break lockdown rules. Of course, then in retrospect, when you're face to with the decision you've taken implicitly or let's say subconsciously even and not consciously then you look at your Yourself and say, How could you have been so stupid?”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I meant, oh, I can't really even, it's hard to even think about my thought process is I think throughout my life I've kind of made judgments again partly my father of risk myself and paradoxically for somebody who has that monarch of Professor Lockdown, I've been somewhat, I come on classic and skeptical myself and I think that was kind of my natural tendency but yeah I feel I have let people down and it was a shock to be in I mean it's quite distressing for my family those close to me to have tabloid journalists parked outside for days on end and so yes I think I've come out of that incident somewhat chastened and maybe a little more humble”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's strange. You can kind of almost have two images of yourself which are not necessarily terribly well connected. So I wasn't, after it happened, of course, I wasn't shocked. I was slightly shocked that I had suddenly become a public figure in the way I have and wasn't really aware of quite how public I had become. I mean, it was a very stupid thing for me to do. And I do apologize. I mean, I completely understand the accusation that it's kind of hypocrisy one rule for some, one rule for others.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, it was a very unfortunate incident because basically what happened then was the absence of evidence about risk was interpreted as evidence of absence. We didn't know whether BSE posed a risk to humans and it turned out it did. Thankfully not a huge risk but certainly there have been several hundred people who have died from that infection. So I think that and other incidents like the foot and mouth disease epidemic have radically changed how science policy feeds into government”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not in the first year where I was studying and modeling the kind of finer details of childhood vaccination programs against measles. But after that point I did get a Baptism of Fire in the sense of working on mad cow disease just as it took off in terms of being recognised as a potential public health threat and I remember meeting John Selwyn Gunner on at least one occasion to try and communicate the results of that analysis.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A seminar by now sadly dead this year Lord May, Robert May based in Oxford and other physicists who became an ecologist and biologist who talked about modelling the HIV epidemic and that really stimulated me in terms of realizing you could apply mathematics the sort of skills I had to studying infectious diseases and then coincidentally the brother of a close friend of mine died from AIDS at the time then a untreatable condition and so I started reading about that and trying to understand it”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was very much more interested in physics and engineering. And so, I mean, I wanted to pursue a career in mathematical physics, really.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was almost the wilderness. It's kind of two miles up a single track road into the kind of thousand feet up on a Welsh hillside. We didn't have any near neighbours, the nearest neighbours were kind of half a mile away, the local kind of farm. So it was quite remote, beautiful.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father also didn't believe in television for children. I hesitate to say he'll be listening to this, that I look back on my childhood quite fondly, but it was a little bit eccentric or out of the usual range in terms of the range of stimuli I had available to me.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the computer I had a Commodore pet two thousand one it had eight kilobytes, eight thousand bytes of memory and a very basic programming language. So yes, you had to do, if you wanted to do anything, you had to program it.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think I had a natural aptitude for them. My father also kind of believed in very early years education in terms of pushing my sister and myself to learn both to read and basic arithmetic before we went to school and introduced me to computers at a very early age. I'm talking about in the mid-70s here, so it's kind of unusual, unique, I think I was in my school class to actually have a computer.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I slightly wince at it because what we actually modeled at the time was a whole set of policy options around social distancing, closing schools, people working from home. And really the government decided on the set of interventions which were then put in place and the fact that we went for kind of what a full-blown Italian or Spanish-style lockdown measure. We were never involved in those operational details. I mean, yes, it doesn't feel like a true monarch for me. The other reason I don't particularly like it is it implies that kind of me, one person was responsible for this huge political policy decision. And that's always been a myth. It's been hundreds of people have inputted into that decision, both hundreds of scientists and people from other disciplines. And so I think recognizing the collective nature of decision making and advice.”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we're entering a time where policy inevitably has to be slightly experimental. We can't predict precisely what the effect of opening pubs again will be. And a lot of the impact of these changes on the virus, on transmission, will be dependent on how people interpret the rules and the risk reduction measures they continue to take. So I wouldn't say I'm nervous. I wouldn't say I'm leaping for joy. We will just have to watch what happens in terms of the surveillance data. Do we start to see clusters of cases emerge, pockets of infection? And if so, how do we respond to those? Or do we see relative little happen, which is what I hope will be the case, at least until the autumn?”
2020-06-26 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Neil Ferguson One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source