Armed with his PhD in mathematic, Shaun Hendy told us 80,000 people are going to die from covid-19 if we didnt do anything about it. His claims sent us into an economy destroying series of lock downs that we now know were totally unnecessary and the supreme leader Ardern gives the guy a prize.

Fresh off awarding one of the other politically driven celebrity scientist with colourful hair the New Zealander of the year award, we now get Shaun” how many do you need” Hendy getting the Prime Ministers Science Prize. Oh please do not Knight Michael Baker or I’m going to pop a vein in my increasing forehead.

Lets just take a closer look at this 80,000 deaths that he calculated. Firstly, to date only 8 countries have reached over 80,000 deaths in total, all of which have over 60,000,000 occupants and are surrounded by other countries with huge inter country people movement.

The worst hit country with a population close to ours is Slovakia with 10,630 deaths to date. Slovakia is surrounded by COVID infested countries and has a GDP almost exactly half of New Zealand’s. Ironically in May last year they were the picture child of flattening the curve, but it seems investing heavily in Sputnik V vaccinations didn’t work out too well for them.

So a similarly populated country with half our GDP, surrounded by COVID and with a “Russian antidote” managed to only get 8 times less deaths than Hendy was computing NZ would face. It is like preparing for an expedition to the moon and saying pack your sun screen because you may accidentally land on the surface of the sun.

It gets better too, his modelling apparently helped us out of lockdown… How exactly? obviously not the same model that predicted 80,000 deaths. There will be those that say he was airing on the side of caution. Well tell that to all the owners of closed shops I see when I walk around the city. Tell that to those that haven’t yet been hit by the tsunami of economic hurt heading our way.

The guy leaped to stardom telling us 80,000 of us are doomed and our supreme leader used this to garner her control over when we can and can’t leave the house.

What’s more staggering is that a recent poll has people believing we are heading in the right direction, I’m sure the titanic was heading in the right direction too people.

I would like to personally, and on behalf of all those whose lives your dodgy modelling has ruined, say a big Fuck You Shaun and your team, you don’t deserve the prize you obviously so like collecting.