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1. “
How Has Professor Gerry Killeen From UCC Fared In His 2020 Predictions For Covid” 
1/25
I said I was going to look at our “esteemed” Doctors and Professors and their predictions over the last 9 months. First up is Prof Gerry Killeen.
https://twitter.com/fasenfeld/status/1345668462912430080
How Has Professor Gerry Killeen From UCC Fared In His 2020 Predictions For Covid” 1/25I said I was going to look at our “esteemed” Doctors and Professors and their predictions over the last 9 months. First up is Prof Gerry Killeen.
https://twitter.com/fasenfeld/status/1345668462912430080
2. Prof Killeen is the AXA Research Chair in Applied Pathogen Ecology at University College Cork. The first thing to note is that AXA is a World Economic Forum partner. Why do all roads lead there 
https://www.weforum.org/organizations/axa
https://www.weforum.org/organizations/axa
3. On 9 Sep 2020, Prof Killeen was on Today FM with Matt Cooper talking about his case predictions.
https://www.todayfm.com/podcasts/the-last-word-with-matt-cooper/pubs-reopen-dublin-limerick-risk-limits-home-visits
This is what he had to say
https://www.todayfm.com/podcasts/the-last-word-with-matt-cooper/pubs-reopen-dublin-limerick-risk-limits-home-visits
This is what he had to say
4. “We were promised a response when we got up to 100 cases a day quite some time ago. We have been past that level for quite some time. Even allowing the effects of relaxation, be it for pubs, schools or colleges you know this trajectory demanded a response two months ago.
5. Even if we assume the current trends continue without accelerating which is unlikely, then it’s not so long ago we had 10 cases a day, now we’re over 100 cases a day. That’s a ten fold increase.
6. There’s no reason it won’t be another ten fold higher in 2 months and another ten fold higher 2 months after that. That’s 1,000 cases a day 2 months from now and 10,000 cases a day by Christmas”
7. So let’s check Prof Killeen’s predictions. On Sep 9th, total cases were at 30,164. On November 9th they were 65,659. So that’s an increase of 35,495. Averaging out over 60 days that’s an average of 591 a day.
8. Nowhere near the 1,000 that he was predicting. Let's roll that on until Christmas where he predicted 10,000 a day. On Christmas Day the total number was 84,098. 1,025 new cases. Not doing very well here are we Prof Killeen. Out by a factor of nearly 10 again.
9. On 15th October Prof Killeen appeared on RTE Primetime and predicted 20,000-30,000 deaths by Christmas. @Fatemperor did a great job in this video.
Here’s what Prof Killeen had to say…
Here’s what Prof Killeen had to say…
10. “The living with the virus strategy is the slow road to herd immunity, the fast road is refrigerated trucks and mass graves. The best estimates we can make are in the region of 20 to 30,000 fatalities”
11. So yet again, let’s see how Prof Killeen did with his predictions. According to the Irish Times there were 1,838 deaths “with” Covid on October 15th. Fast forward to December 31st and that number increased to 2,237.
12. By my Maths and I wasn’t particularly good at Maths that means there were 399 deaths. I’m pretty sure that means Prof Killeen was out by a factor of 75 (30,000/399). I mean seriously, that even puts Professor Neil Ferguson to shame.
13. Let’s hop back to July now. On 15 July 2020 Prof Killeen was on Today FM with Matt Cooper discussing masks.
Here’s what he said https://www.todayfm.com/podcasts/the-last-word-with-matt-cooper/rise-covid-19-infections-will-wedding-guest-lists-cut
Here’s what he said https://www.todayfm.com/podcasts/the-last-word-with-matt-cooper/rise-covid-19-infections-will-wedding-guest-lists-cut
14. “I think it’s great, I’m thrilled to see it and I just encourage anybody listening to get on board. It really cuts down on the amount of droplets and aerosol that leaves your mouth when you talk.
15. When you cough it’s obvious, when you sneeze it’s obvious especially when you speak, that prevents you from passing on the infection through the air and also through the surfaces around you that you would leave those residues on.
16. There’s a wonderful paper about Hong Kong and you can actually see the changes in trajectory of the epidemic as soon as the people of Hong Kong just decided to put their masks on themselves before there was any messaging.
17. They did that based on the news coming from China and you can actually see the epidemic change trajectory in the right direction”
Help me out here people. From looking at the graph it seems that masks haven’t made the blindest bit of difference in HK. Virus is gonna virus.
Help me out here people. From looking at the graph it seems that masks haven’t made the blindest bit of difference in HK. Virus is gonna virus.
18. I did go searching for the paper that Prof Killeen referenced and am unsure if this is it but think it might be
COVID-19 and Public Interest in Face Mask Use
https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1164/rccm.202004-1188LE
COVID-19 and Public Interest in Face Mask Use
https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1164/rccm.202004-1188LE
19. This paper was published by the Chinese University Of Hong Kong. CUHK has received at least $300,000 in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the last 10 years
20. And just to go off on a slight tangent. One of the BMG grants with CUHK from 2009 was to do with viruses in animals and humans. That's 11 years ago folks
21. Alternatively, it might be this paper from the Lancet in March 2020
Rational use of face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic https://www.thelancet.com/article/S2213-2600(20)30134-X/fulltext
Rational use of face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic https://www.thelancet.com/article/S2213-2600(20)30134-X/fulltext
22. This paper also has massive funding issues. The 2 lead authors, Shuo Feng are affiliated to the Oxford Vaccine Group who are jointly developing the Astra-Zeneca vaccine.
23. Chen Shen works in the Department of Epidemiology in Imperial College London. The very same ICL where Prof Neil Ferguson works and who is funded by (yes you guessed it) The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
24. Anyway, back to Prof Killeen. We can see that his predictions for cases, deaths and the use of face masks has been so far off the mark. I wonder what Profs O Neill, McConkey, Staines & Ryan have in store for us over the coming couple of weeks 
25. Thanks for reading. If you would like to read additional threads on other COVID topics I have collated them all in the one place for easy reading. https://twitter.com/fasenfeld/status/1340351027938283520
