Since the AIDS epidemic, people have been pumping out such models with often incredible figures. For AIDS, the Public Health Service announced (without documenting) there would be 450,000 cases by the end of 1993, with 100,000 in that year alone. The media faithfully parroted it. There were 17,325 by the end of that year, with about 5,000 in 1993. SARS (2002-2003) was supposed to kill perhaps “millions,” based on analyses. It killed 744 before disappearing. CDC predicted 1.4 million would die from Ebola, but the final death toll was 8,000. Michael Fumento writes in Issues & Insights that Oxford University Neil Ferguson predicted 200 million bird flu deaths, and 50,000 BSE death – but the actual number of deaths were 440 and 200, respectively. In the current crisis, Ferguson is the author of the most alarming model, and the one most influential in the implementation of the draconian quarantines worldwide, projecting a maximum of 2.2 million American deaths and 550,000 United Kingdom deaths unless there were severe restrictions for 18 months or until a vaccine was developed. “Assuming it’s possible to model an epidemic at all,” Fumento writes, “any that the mainstream press relays will have been designed to promote panic.”