Neil Ferguson on modelling Covid-19

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neil Ferguson is known to many as Professor Lockdown. The mathematical models he created to predict the spread of Covid-19 were influential but, he says, it took him quite a long time to be persuaded that full lockdown was a good idea. A physicist by training, Neil switched from studying string theory to the spread of disease and presented scientific advice to government during the BSE crisis, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in livestock in 2001 and the swine flu pandemic of 2009. In January 2020, he issued his first report on Covid-19 estimating the extent of the outbreak in Wuhan City in China. In March, he predicted that 510,000 people in the UK could die if nothing was done to mitigate the spread of this pandemic. Does he stand by that prediction? And how worried is he now? Jim Al-Khalili talks to Neil Ferguson about his life and work, the tricky relationship between politics and science and asks if he has any regrets about lockdown. Producer: Anna Buckley for BBC Radio Science

Transcript

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0:45.0	Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:48.0	The mathematical models that were created by Neil Ferguson to predict the likely spread of COVID-19 in the UK were hugely
0:55.8	influential. In the early days of the pandemic, Neil was on the Scientific Advisory Group
1:00.6	for emergencies, Sage, presenting scientific evidence to the government, and giving
1:05.2	regular media interviews on BBC Radio 4 and other media outlets.
1:09.9	This was when he became known to many of us as Professor Lockdown. In the next half hour
1:14.7	I want to find out how Neil, a physicist by training, came to be in this position and six months
1:20.6	into the pandemic and with winter approaching what he makes of it all now.
1:24.6	Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London, welcome to the Life Scientific.
1:28.1	Thank you. It's good to be here. I do think that in many people's minds,
1:30.8	Neil Ferguson, you are Professor Lock professor lockdown how do you feel about
1:34.5	that I have to say I don't particularly like the moniker it may seem like I was the
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