This covid narrative collapses under the slightest scrutiny

The Conservative Woman (UK) publishes our response to Matt Ridley & Anton van der Merwe's 'lab leak' paper

The Conservative Woman (UK) has published a response by

Jonathan Engler

, myself, and

Martin Neil

to

Matt Ridley

and Anton van der Merwe’s paper, “The preponderance of evidence suggests that the Covid-19 pandemic began a result of a research accident.”

In “This covid narrative collapses under the slightest scrutiny,” we challenge Ridley and van der Merwe’s belief that a lab-leaked novel SARS virus caused a pandemic as limited to a false binary and supported only by circumstantial evidence. We also invite the authors to respond to a series of questions, in the spirit of healthy debate and scientific inquiry.

Readers may recall that last year, before the U.S. presidential election, we invited two platforms known for publishing views critical of the official COVID narrative — The Daily Sceptic and Brownstone Institute — to host a written debate between us and Matt Ridley and his Viral co-author, Alina Chan. Both outlets declined. (For a re-cap, see article below.)

"Question Everything" (Except That Thing)

When The Telegraph published Ridley and Anton van der Merwe’s paper earlier this month, Sean Flanagan instigated a thread on X that resulted in CW editor Kathy Gyngell saying she would publish a response.

Thanks to Sean and Kathy for helping bring our perspective to a wider audience. We hope Lord Ridley and Professor van der Merwe will engage.

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Correction Needed

One factual error we didn’t address in our critique — but which warrants correction in Ridley and van der Merwe’s paper — concerns their claim about when “the pandemic” began.

The WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 but did not declare a pandemic until 11 March 2020.

When asked via X about the use of the word ‘pandemic’ and apparent dating the error, Lord Ridley blamed a misplaced comma and poor phrasing.

However, Ridley’s “corrections” do not fix the problem, and the paper needs to be revised so that it accurately represents the chronology of events.

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