Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

This blog post was adapted from this Twitter thread:

Articles often claim that the Delta variant is more virulent, e.g. "Citing the spread of the more virulent Delta coronavirus variant in the United Kingdom". Earlier in the year the same was said about the Alpha (Kent) variant, that it was more "virulent". That was untrue. Virulent means "harmful", not "infectious".If anything, the evidence suggests that the Delta variant may be less virulent, but more transmissible/infectious—although it is hard to be sure this is true, given that the vulnerable old are now protected by vaccines."The suggestion that the Indian variant is more pathogenic needs to be taken with a big dose of salt. The same was initially suggested for the Kent variant but was later shown not to be true" writes Professor Ian Jones.Respiratory viruses tend to evolve to be more transmissible but less virulent: they do better if you go out and about meeting people. This is not true of insect-borne or water-borne viruses, which don't care how sick you are: insects or water do the going out about about for you.

Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash

My article for The Telegraph:

Britain leads the pack on vaccination, but lags far behind America, Germany and France on liberation. A big reason is that our Government remains in thrall to a profession that has performed uniquely badly during the pandemic: modellers. The Government’s reliance on Sage experts’ computer modelling to predict what would happen with or without various interventions has proved about as useful as the ancient Roman habit of consulting trained experts in “haruspicy” – interpreting the entrails of chickens.

As Sarah Knapton has revealed in these pages, the brutal postponement of Freedom Day coincided with the release of a bunch of alarmist models predicting a huge new wave of deaths. The most pessimistic, inevitably from Imperial College, forecast 203,824 deaths over the next year. It did so by assuming just a 77-87 per cent reduction in hospitalisations following two vaccinations, despite the fact that real world data shows two vaccinations to be between 92 per cent (AstraZeneca) and 96 per cent (Pfizer) effective in preventing hospitalisation. That would cut the Imperial forecast of deaths by a gob-smacking 90 per cent to 26,854.

My article for the Genetic Literacy Project:

The Government was right to make provision for a temporary and limited derogation for the use of the neonicotinoid seed treatment Cruiser SB on sugar beet for the 2021 season, although the colder conditions of recent months mean it will not be required this year.

The impact of virus yellows on last year’s beet crop for many growers was absolutely devastating and explains why the UK, after resisting in previous years, followed 13 EU member states in granting this emergency derogation. But I cannot help calling out the sheer hypocrisy of those in the organic and anti-pesticide lobby who portrayed the Government’s decision as heralding the extinction of all bees and other pollinating insects.