Imperial College London made headlines on March 17 for their apocalyptic projection of Coronavirus deaths worldwide. Their lead researcher, Neil Ferguson, claimed that 250,000 citizens of the UK would die from COVID-19. On Thursday, he dramatically reduced it to less than a tenth that number.

Ferguson now claims that UK deaths “could be substantially lower” than 20,000. He adds that two-thirds of these victims would have died in the next six months anyway due to underlying health conditions.

The original study has been repeated endlessly on cable news, adding to the sense of panic among hosts and many in their audience. Nine days ago, Imperial College London claimed that the US would lose up to 2 million Americans. Their new numbers? Just 84,000, again with two-thirds predicted to die within the next six months without Coronavirus.

Imperial’s latest projection would still be considered a major public health problem, but it contains a staggering drop from the worst-case scenario by a factor of 25. Using 2017 figures, 84,000 lost would place Coronavirus as the seventh leading cause of US deaths, tied with diabetes, and far below heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, respiratory disease, stroke, or Alzheimer’s disease.

You can view all the new numbers via Excel file at this link.

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