UNN has been sent email responses from Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London.
Professor Ferguson is a controversial figure who had to quit as a government adviser on coronavirus after admitting an “error of judgement”.
Ferguson, whose advice to the prime minister led to the UK lockdown, said he regretted “undermining” the messages on social distancing.
It was also reported that a woman he was said to be in a relationship with visited his home in lockdown breaking the rules that as a member of SAGE he was involved in setting out.
Ferguson has also been accused by critics of inaccurate modelling in relation to a number of previous epidemiological events and especially in relation to current Covid19 models with this being a matter of vigorous debate on social media.
The email received was as follows:
I then reached out to Professor Ferguson and Imperial College for a response asking the following questions:
Dear Neil,
We have been forwarded correspondence from a Lynda xxxxxxxx in relation to an email she sent you with a video to your official e-mail address.Your response to this e-mail was ‘Thanks. Filed under ‘Vaccination (nutters)’We will shortly be publishing an article on this and are looking for your response and also that of the Imperial College London to the following:“In light of the considerable mental health issues currently facing the UK population, due in part to the policy of lockdown, is it appropriate for you in your prominent position to refer to people sending correspondence to you as ‘nutters’.Likewise we would enquire as to whether Imperial College thinks this kind of response using official channels is appropriate considering you do a great deal of research into mental health and the damaging impact that using such terminology can have?I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards,David Clews
I completely reject the accusation I was making light of mental health conditions. I was using the term according to the OED definition: “(informal) a crazy or eccentric person”. I had no reason to believe that Ms xxxxxxxx had such a condition, but if she does, my retort referred to her beliefs not her mental health. Perhaps your publication would use the term “nutter” for someone with such a condition, but I never would. Nor would I describe someone with a mental health problem as crazy.
Wild conspiracy theories are crazy though. From the large number of emails she sends to me and other scientists, it is apparent Ms xxxxxxxxx holds irrational and evidence-free beliefs about COVID-19 and vaccination. She is also quite happy to accuse me and other scientists of genocide, among other things. I think my response was relatively mild, given the correspondence she has sent me. I attach a selection of her emails for your perusal.
I would be happy to contribute to a story about quite how much abusive and conspiracy-theory laden emails I and other scientists working on COVID get, up to and including threats of violence or worse. But I fear, having looked up your recent work (https://unitynewsnetwork.co.uk/whitty-says-no-more-lockdowns-and-we-must-learn-to-live-with-covid-he-cannot-be-trusted/ ), that you seem to share at least some of the same irrational beliefs.
Best wishes,
Neil Ferguson
Professor Ferguson included these emails and I then replied with the following:
Dear Neil,Thanks very much for your swift reply and I look forward to hearing from Imperial College on this.We would be more than happy to publish any piece that you had for us as in relation to your experiences as we welcome a wide variety of contributions.Likewise I do a 4 nightly live show you would be more than welcome on because whilst I am extremely critical of you and your colleagues actions over the past 16 months I do believe in free speech as well as rigorous debate on topics. This has of course been lacking from the public discourse and has led more and more people to seek radical solutions as to why their views are being suppressed.In terms of irrational beliefs up until recently you could have argued that it would be irrational to lock an entire country up in their homes based on scientific modelling that has been shown not to be so accurate over the years but hey what do I know!Kind Regards,David Clews
A PS
If you want to hear from Imperial College, then you sent your enquiry to the wrong address – enquiries@doc.ic.ac.uk is the Engineering Faculty.
I’ve cc’d Andrew Scheuber, the College’s director of media relations. But I am fairly confident that Imperial College will consider this a matter for me alone.
Best,
Neil
At the time of publishing we have not yet received a response from Imperial College.
Lead Correspondent | David Clews is the Lead Correspondent for UNN, with over 20 years of political/campaigning experience and a wealth of social media and communication skills David gets to the heart of what is really important to the real people of the UK.
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