Today is the one year anniversary of the time that crystal physicist Neil Ferguson of Imperial College went to Downing Street, unveiled a wildly alarmist quack epidemiology model predicting 510K deaths in the UK and 2.2 million in the US, convinced both governments to change course and embrace an ill-conceived lockdown strategy that has now persisted almost a year beyond its initial promise, and gave the Covid he was carrying to the Prime Minister and about half his cabinet after he failed to follow the same social distancing advice he wanted to impose on everyone else.
For some reason, people still treat him as a credible expert on the pandemic.
Something else to ponder:
If we accept - just hypothetically - the silly Non-Aggression Principle argument that treats going out in public during the pandemic as a high-externality activity that is therefore morally blameworthy for exposing other people to potential harm, there's probably no greater example of that sort of behavior than Neil Ferguson.
Specifically:
- Ferguson definitely had Covid, and was probably showing mild symptoms on 3/16 because he tested positive a day later.
- As a disease modeling expert, Ferguson had better knowledge than most about how he was potentially exposing others by going out in public with symptoms.
- Despite that knowledge, Ferguson placed himself in close vicinity of dozens of other non-infected people, including the head of one of the most powerful governments in the world and several high ranking cabinet ministers.
That looks like a textbook example of an egregious Non-Aggression Principle violation, again granting the assumption that there's anything to that argument (IMO there isn't - it's tautological nonsense).