NEIL FERGUSON’S REMARKABLE FALL FROM GRACE:
I originally had Neil Ferguson down as a kind of Henry Kissinger figure. The professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London seemed to have bewitched successive prime ministers, blinding them with his brilliance. Whenever a health emergency broke out, whether it was mad cow disease or avian flu, there he was, PowerPoint in hand, telling the leaders of the United Kingdom what to do. And they invariably fell into line. In 2001, after the outbreak of foot and mouth, his team at Imperial advised Tony Blair’s government to adopt a strategy of pre-emptive culling, leading to the slaughter of more than six million animals. Gordon Brown consulted him about swine flu in 2009 and two months ago Boris Johnson was persuaded to put the country under lockdown after the 51-year-old boffin bamboozled him with one of his computer models.
But it turns out to be less a case of Dr Strangelove than Carry On Doctor. On Tuesday night, we discovered that the furrowed-browed scientist, who has been at the Prime Minister’s side throughout this crisis, is in fact Austin Powers in a lab coat. He’s been having an affair with a 38-year-old married woman who travels regularly across the capital from her home in south London to spend time with him. This revelation, which has to be the scoop of the year, was brought to us by the Telegraph and is the epitome of what newspapers call a ‘marmalade dropper’ — a story so astonishing it causes the typical reader to drop his toast mid-mouthful.
A good deal of the coverage has focused on Ferguson’s hypocrisy. After all, this is the man who has told 66 million Britons they must remain in their homes to protect the NHS and save lives. Under the draconian new rules imposed by the Coronavirus Act, we’re allowed to venture out only if we have a ‘reasonable excuse’ such as a medical emergency, daily exercise, essential food shopping or certain types of work. Hard to imagine an extra-marital affair falling under one of those headings. How can Professor Lockdown encourage the authorities to enforce these rules when he’s flagrantly breaking them himself?
“On at least two occasions, Antonia Staats, 38, traveled across London from her home in the south of the capital to spend time with the government scientist, nicknamed Professor Lockdown,” reported the Telegraph.
Staats, we later learn, lives with her husband and two children in a £1.9 million home in south London. She’s a “left-wing campaigner” who is reportedly in an open marriage. According to the Telegraph, “She has told friends about her relationship with Prof Ferguson, but does not believe their actions to be hypocritical because she considers the households to be one.”
Ah yes, the old our-households-are-one-because-I’m-in-an-open-marriage argument. Never mind that a week before Ferguson and Staats’ first meeting, Britain’s Health Secretary had said even couples not living together must stay apart during the lockdown.
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One rule for the poor people, another rule for us elites. And they wonder how they got Brexit.
A month ago, Glenn linked to this story in Science Alert, “Stunning Satellite Images Reveal Pollution Plummeting Across Europe in Lockdown,” with the Insta-headline, “My Grandpa Was Right: Smog Means Jobs. And Conversely.”
There have been loads of enviro-lefty articles along similar lines shortly after the Big Lockdown began. Will Ferguson or Staats be asked about their role in setting that scenario in motion?