News Round-Up
- “Every adult in Britain could get their first Covid jab by early June after surge in vaccine supply” – Vaccine roll out well-ahead of schedule according to MailOnline
- “Vaccinated people are 30% less likely to pass on Covid after their first dose” – MailOnline reports on a Scottish NHS study which suggests that vaccination cuts transmission
- “Goldman boss wants all staff in the office by the end of summer” – The end is in sight for working at home for staff at Goldman Sachs, the Times reports. It’s still some months off though
- “Rishi Sunak says return to normal office working after pandemic will ‘probably not’ happen” – Rishi reckons that there will probably not be a full return to the office working of old, the Telegraph reports
- “Vaccines for all over-40s by Easter after ‘bumper boost’ to supplies” – The vaccine rollout is ahead of schedule and accelerating, according to the Telegraph
- “Citigroup offers London staff Covid tests as part of back-to-office plan” – Citigroup has started sending Covid tests to employees and contractors who have started coming into the bank’s Canary Wharf headquarters, City AM reports. They’ll surely be delighted
- “Entire year of 230 students is sent home from school after positive Covid tests less than a week into return to school” – The whole of year 10 at Budmouth Academy, Dorset was sent home after an unspecified number of positive tests, reports MailOnline
- “Sarah Everard vigil may still go ahead despite police ruling it out, organisers claim” – Sky News says Everard vigil likely to go ahead after a judge refused to intervene in a police decision not to allow a gathering
- “Boris Johnson’s UK virus strategy needs people to catch the disease” – A flashback to a year ago, when the strategy was reportedly to let people catch the disease and develop immunity
- “How much longer can the law be used to stop us doing things that are low risk, even safe?” – There are serious questions to be asked, says the Telegraph, “about the necessity or morality or quashing our basic civil liberties”
- “From masks to reopening schools, the adults who are supposed to speak up for children have failed spectacularly” – Most of the adults and organisations who are supposed to speak up for children have failed, writes Molly Kingsley in the Telegraph
- “SAGE’s covert coup Part Two – Project Fear” – The second instalment of Sonia Elijah’s investigation into SAGE for the Conservative Woman. Here she looks into the subcommittees
- “I wish I’d shouted louder about early lockdown, says Maths Professor” – A Times interview with Professor Adam Kleczkowski. In 2012, he wrote a paper entitled “Controlling epidemic spread by social distancing: Do it well or not at all”
- “The cruelty of the house party ban” – Writing in Spiked, Robert Jackman highlights an omission in Boris’s roadmap: the £10,000 fine for house parties isn’t scheduled for removal
- “Covid Regulations accused had right of silence” – The Law Society Gazette reports on the case of Keith Neale, who was suspected of breaching the Coronavirus Regulations. The Court ruled that he was under no obligation or duty to give the police his name and address
- “Covid rates crashing as vaccines make an impact” – A video update revealing the latest data from the ZOE Covid Symptom Study from Professor Tim Spector
- “Do vaccines cure Long Covid?” – A significant proportion of Long Covid sufferers have found that their symptoms lessen or disappear upon vaccination, according to this episode of the BBC’s Health Check
- “EU countries halt Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine rollout over blood clots” – A report from Politico on the suspension of the AstraZeneca jab in a number of countries in Europe
- “What inapt pandemic response is doing to our societies” – “What we’ve had in the last year are mostly stupid government regulations”, writes Joakim Book at AIER, “and people sheepishly internalising them as if they were handed down by a prophet on stone tablets”
- “The brutalisation of college students during lockdowns” – AIER report by Jack Nicastro and Phillip W. Magness on how US students were hung out to dry by college administrators “acting responsibly”
- “Lessons of the Long Covid Year” – An editorial in the Wall Street Journal marking a year of Covid. Lesson number one: “Lockdowns made the pandemic suffering far worse than necessary”
- “Companies that rode pandemic boom get a reality check” – Investors were flocking to companies like Zoom, but they are drifting away elsewhere, the New York Times reports
- “Pastor Coates has spent weeks in prison for a crime that is not punishable with jail time” – John Calpay writes in the PostMillennial about Pastor Coates, who is in prison in Canada for “a provincial infraction that is not punishable by jail time”
- “Did The Shutdowns Save Lives? A Year Later, Statistical Analysis Suggests Not” – Chuck DeVore examines the data and finds no evidence that lockdowns did anything but “deepen the economic suffering, increase suicides, and prevent lifesaving medical tests and treatments”
- “Peter McCullough, MD testifies to Texas Senate HHS Committee” – Watch the physician speak about treatments for Covid, and how there was a surprising lack of interest in this from government and media
- Andrew Neil holds forth about Harry and Meghan on Spectator TV
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The best bit of the Andrew Neil interview (here’s the ‘alternative H&M interview’: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMS2zHtlUzN/?igshid=h5i7birqsi3g) concerns the scepticism of the Polish community (Andrew Neil 50 minute mark) in Britain regarding the government’s intentions towards them and other citizens. Holmes: ‘Apparently, having lived, many of them, under a totalitarian state, they are unwilling to believe that the government, any government, means them well.’ Dr Watson: ‘No shit………’ I visited the East German border in 1977. I did not like what I saw……massive wire fence topped with barbed wire, anti personnel mines, goon towers, armed guards, German Shepherd guard dogs. I never believed that totalitarian government would come to these shores although I have had enough unpleasant experiences in this country to know that it undoubtedly could and that many would find it empowering for their profoundly illiberal, even criminal, inclinations towards their fellow citizens. I have the utmost sympathy for the views of the Polish community. I find them enlightened and clear sighted; in stark contrast to the views of many other British citizens. I have been vaccinated many times in the past and carried a yellow fever vaccination certificate on my travels from time to time. Nevertheless I very much hope… Read more »
Totally agree, its just a terrible indictment on the ‘majority’ that it takes the minority to take this stance.
Re the 30/53% reduction in transmission of virus after one/two injections.
This is complete garbage. All it does is take one point at more or less the height of the winter respiratory disease season and another in March, when its ended. And proclaim the reduction is due to vaccination.
We all knew this was what they planned, the timing of the start of the vaccination was not a coincidence, its because they can trot out these meaningless ‘results’.
The worse thing is the majority of the great unwashed seem unable or unwilling to use the odd brain cell and instead absorb all this crap.
NHS Scotland review of covid cases has found that 64% of cases in this winter’s period were as a result of infections in hospitals. Their comment that this is ignored at SAGE and in the modelling is striking. Its reported ( low key) in Telegraph, can’t see it anywhere else.
Seasonality.
There is a lot of talk of the vaccinations driving UK cases/deaths lower. But compare the curve of the peak of cases/deaths in Jan to present lows in March between UK and Portugal. 37% of UK population vaccinated, just about 10% in Portugal; yet the peak in Jan in Portugal was higher ( per million) and the trough in March is lower.
This is the seasonal effect common to all respiratory diseases, basically its driven by weather.