News Round Up

• “Boris Johnson receives first dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine” – Sky News reports that Boris has been jabbed
• “Did I give my patients Covid?” – Writing in UnHerd, an anonymous junior doctor, who they have called Jane Smith, says that she has watched her “hospital make mistake after mistake” in the face of Covid
• “Wetherspoons founder says Covid lockdowns have ‘created economic and social mayhem and colossal debts‘” – Weatherspoon Chairman Tim Martin has spoken to the Daily Mail about the damage lockdown has done to his pub chain
• “It shames this country that speaking up for children has become taboo” – “The past year has been profoundly damaging for Britain’s children,” says Molly Kingsley in the Telegraph. “Now we must put them first”
• “Furlough free-for-all is poor value for money” – The US model of higher jobless benefits and universal stimulus cheques looks a more sensible approach, says Ed Conway in the Times
• “The Covid public inquiry will be an expensive waste of everyone’s time” – Len Shackleton argues in the Telegraph that there’s not much point in holding an inquiry
• “Will Covid cost less than expected?” – At the Spectator, Kate Andrews finds cause for some optimism in yesterday’s update from the Office for National Statistics
• “Our very British brand of totalitarianism” – Huxley’s dystopian vision in Brave New World is the one we’re headed for, writes James Jeffrey in the Critic, not George Orwell’s
• “One of the lockdown’s greatest casualties could be science” – “Politicians, journalists, and scientists have transferred the disease burden onto the working class,” write Professor Martin Kulldorff and Professor Jay Bhattacharya in the Federalist. “They’ve also dangerously undermined scientific inquiry”
• “A successful vaccine campaign alone will not end UK’s Covid outbreak, study shows” – The Telegraph reports on more gloomy modelling from Warwick. Chris Snowden is unimpressed
• “Britain’s ‘One-Jab’ Strategy” – The British vaccine strategy is working and it offers “lessons for the world”, says David Leonhardt at the New York Times
• “Awakening consciences about the abortion-tainted vaccines” – An article by Dr. Stacy Trasancos in Crisis Magazine highlighting ethical concerns about the vaccines from a Catholic perspective
• “Of asymmetric risk and the ethics of coercion” – “Vaccine passports are nonsense,” says Alex Starling in Reaction. Hear Hear
• “Debate: are vaccine passports necessary?” – Watch Silkie Carlo of Big Brother Watch debate the question with Kirsty Innes of the Tony Blair Institute on LockdownTV by UnHerd
• “EU’s drug regulator backs the AstraZeneca vaccine, calling it ‘safe and effective’” – But the regulator ignored a report from Norwegian doctors linking the vaccine to a small number of adverse events, according to Science Norway
• “AstraZeneca: German team discovers thrombosis trigger” – Scientists at Greifswald teaching hospital claim to have discovered the cause of the blood clots in vaccine recipients, but doctors are saying that it can be treated, says Deutsche Welle
• “Hamburg to return to full lockdown” – The harbour city state is set to enter another lockdown, Deutsche Welle reports, and Cologne is also tightening the rules
• “Ron DeSantis on the pandemic year: Don’t trust the elites” – “Influential people in public health, Government and the media failed to rise to the moment,” says the Florida Governor while taking a victory lap
• “CDC Says Schools Can Now Space Students three feet apart, rather than six” – The CDC has relaxed its guidance for social distancing in schools, NPR reports
• “Three feet or six? Distancing guideline for schools stirs debate” – “The origin of the six-foot distancing recommendation is something of a mystery,” says the New York Times
• “The Chicken Little act isn’t working – Covid mania is wearing off” – Like Chicken Little, the public health officials keep telling people that the sky is falling in, writes Jordan Schachtel. Trouble is, people don’t believe it anymore
• “They said things would be much worse in States without lockdowns. They were wrong” – US States that came swiftly out of lockdown were told they were heading for disaster, but, as Ryan McMaken points out for Mises Wire, it didn’t turn out that way
• “The disease models were tested and failed, massively” – Phillips W. Magness recounts the dismal track record of Professor Ferguson’s Covid modelling for AIER
• “Essential and non-essential: Never again” – Governments and societies must never again distinguish between the ‘essential’ and the ‘non-essential’ businesses, writes Jack Nicastro at AIER
• “Oscars 2021 ceremony will be in-person and Zoom-free, producers say” – Reuters reports that the Oscars ceremony will be “an intimate, in-person gathering, held without Zoom and limited to nominees, presenters and their guests”
• “Tanzania’s first female leader urges unity after Covid sceptic Magufuli dies” – The Guardian reports that Megufuli’s successor, Samia Suluhu Hassan, is likely to do a U-turn on Tanzania’s Covid policies
• “Step 10: Naomi Wolf updates her New York Times Bestseller The End Of America” – In 2008, Naomi Wolf wrote that would-be tyrants always use take the same 10 steps to close down democracy. In this video, she updates the book to say that America has reached the tenth step
• “Stop Vaccine Passports” – Big Brother Watch has launched a campaign