News Round Up

• “Moment girl, two, sobs and begs to use the toilet after five shops and cafés refused to let her use their bathrooms” – Adults in five shops and cafes in Sheffield refused toddler the use of the bathrooms due to Covid safety rules, MailOnline reports
• “Horrified Edinburgh mum smacked on head while she pushed pram as men shouted ‘Covid’ at her” – An Asian-looking mother was assaulted by a group of teenagers, Edinburghlive reports
• “I will fight in court to get pubs open again, writes Punch Taverns founder Hugh Osmond” – The entrepreneur writes in the Daily Mail to explain why he and Sacha Lord are taking the Government to court
• “Public should be ‘really worried’ about new crackdown on right to protest, ex-police chief says” – The ex police chief appeared on Times Radio to accuse the Government of putting rights “fundamental to our democracy” at risk, reports the Independent. Includes a clip
• “Covid-Status Certification Review – Call for evidence” – Michael Gove has announced a review into vaccine passports. Let him know what you think of them by clicking on the link
• “Andrew Bailey’s note of Covid caution” – Kate Andrews provides some analysis on the prospect of inflation in the Spectator, following the Bank of England Governor’s forecast that economic output will be back to its pre-Covid level by the end of the year
• “Britain enjoying greatest ever surge in economic optimism amid COVID-19 vaccine rollout, poll shows” – The Evening Standard reports on an opinion poll which suggests that economic optimism is recovering magnificently
• “Do Some Workers And Business Owners Secretly Prefer Lockdown Misery?” – John Tammy speculates in Forbes that some businesses are not unhappy about the loss of economic freedom in lockdown, as it means there is no pressure to compete in order to survive
• “Conspiracy Theories” – Conspiracy theories abound when official explanations are weak, says Alistair Cavendish. For example, lockdowns
• “The madness of Zero Covid” – Christine Padgham points out for ThinkScotland that “as long as we test, we will always find Covid”
• “The psychology of crowd control – and why the UK may see violence escalate before lockdown ends” – Things could easily tip over into serious rioting, writes Dominic Bliss in the National Geographic
• “This Government has no right to demand answers from the Met Police” – It’s not the police at fault, Ross Clark points out in the Telegraph. It’s the lockdown laws
• “Peter Hitchens: Police have become overbearing, shouty militia” – Hitchens welcomes the fact that people are finally questioning lockdown rules in the wake of the break up of Sarah Everard’s vigil on Clapham Common
• “Italian prosecutor seizes batch of AstraZeneca Covid-19 jabs ‘as a precaution,’ launches manslaughter investigation after death” – RT reports that a prosecutor in Biella has opened a manslaughter investigation following a post-inoculation death
• “The EMA COVID-19 data leak, and what it tells us about mRNA instability” – Leaked documents showed that some early batches of the Pfizer vaccine “had lower than expected levels of intact mRNA”, reports Serena Tinari for the BMJ, “prompting wider questions”
• “Chaos in EU over AstraZeneca Covid vaccine concerns” – The Telegraph reports on the growing list of countries suspending the AstraZeneca Jab, to the bafflement of British scientists
• “Vaccine death or coincidence?” – Kate Dunlop looks at the difficulties in distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence for the Conservative Woman
• “Europe’s vaccine suspensions could come back to bite Britain” – Writing in the Spectator, Dr Mark Toshner fears the impact of the vaccine rollout slowing down in Europe
• “Fact check: does the AstraZeneca jab cause more blood clots?” – Steerpike at the Spectator applies some scepticism to the concerns causing European countries to suspend rollout of the vaccine
• “Is Europe’s AstraZeneca jab decision-making flawed?” – Nick Triggle asks why so many European countries have suspended the roll out of the AstraZeneca vaccine for the BBC. They’re using the precautionary principle, he writes, “which can sometimes do more harm than good”
• “Portugal and Mauritius removed from England’s ‘travel ban’ red list” – Portugal and Mauritius are coming off the red list, Sky News reports, and Ethiopia, Oman, Somalia and Qatar are going on
• “The gradual return of good sense” – Outside of a few states, America is practically back to normal, says Jeffrey A. Tucker of AIER
• “The one-year anniversary of lockdowns” – Edward Peter Stringham marks the anniversary of lockdowns with a piece for AIER noting that even some lockdown supporters have stopped arguing that they work
• “Non-Covid death epidemic of the future” – The cost of lockdown will be accounted for, says Parvez Dara at AIER, in a “rash of deaths that could have been prevented in the recent past and more so in the coming future, from not screening, [and] not diagnosing”
• “Free States vs Lockdown States: Freedom prevailed, while Communism failed” – Jordan Schachtel analyses the unemployment data from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. No prizes for guessing which state has the lowest unemployment… South Dakota
• “Virus tolls similar despite governors’ contrasting actions” – AP News puzzles over the mystery of why Florida and California have an almost identical number of Covid deaths per million in spite of their different approaches to managing the pandemic
• “The World Health Organisation’s appeasement of China has made another pandemic more likely” – Writing in the Telegraph, Matt Ridley lambasts the WHO’s failure to properly investigate the origin of SARS-CoV-2
• “This house criminalised the freedom of protest” – Charles Walker MP asks the Home Secretary if she agrees that now is the time to decriminalise freedom of protest