News Round Up

• “Will you need a vaccine passport to go to the pub?” – The five main takeaways from Boris’s session at the liaison committee this afternoon, from Katy Balls at the Spectator
• “Health security body gives UK ‘protective shield‘” – The BBC covers Hancock’s announcement about the UK Health Security Agency which brings together Public Health England (PHE), NHS Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC). It is launching on April 1st
• “COVID-19 Weekly Bulletin” – The latest update from the Health Advisory Recovery Team
• “I’m Janice! Get me out of here! I’ve been locked up for too long” – “We’ve endured the psychological experiment of Covid long enough,” writes Janice Turner in the Times
• “A year of fear” – Dr Gary Sidley explains how the Government’s language of fear led to a compliant population in the Critic
• “Should we vaccinate kids against Covid?” – Joanna Rossiter considers the implications of combining the flu and Covid jabs for the Spectator
• “Is AstraZeneca’s Covid jab effective against the South African variant?” – Writing in the Spectator, Ross Clark looks at a study which which suggest the AstraZeneca vaccine might be only 21.9% effective against the South African Variant
• “Lateral flow Covid testing too inaccurate to be used in mass screening, review finds” – The Telegraph reports the results of a number of major studies: asymptomatic testing only picked up around 50% of cases, and picked up far more false than real positives when infection rates were low 
• “The many scandals of the PCR test: Part 1” – Sonia Elijah looks back at the Drosten paper and cycle thresholds for the Conservative Woman. Further scandals to be revealed in Part 2
• “Public Health has turned on the public” – “Gone are the days when employing the police in a Public Health campaign would be seen as a failure of policy,” says Amy Jones at UnHerd. “It is now seen as a necessary requirement”
• “Libertarians have lost their way over vaccine passports” – Boris believes he is being libertarian in allowing publicans the freedom to decide whether they ask for a vaccine passport, says Freddie Sayers at UnHerd. But a state truly devoted to protecting liberty “would not wave this measure through”
• “The hibernation of democracy” – The most dire consequence of lockdown has been the adjournment of politics itself, say Brendan O’Neil at Spiked
• “Young people are sick of lockdown” – Spiked reveals that two in five young people are regularly disobeying the Government’s advice
• “Huge crowd gathers in Sheffield park as worried dog walker issues lockdown warning” – A DJ performance drew crowds of young people at a Sheffield beauty spot, the Star reports, causing consternation among local dog walkers
• “Banging the Drum” – It is important to keep “banging the drum” against lockdown, writes Alistair Cavendish. “The anti-lockdown case” he reckons “is more popular than most of us think”
• “Is it time to take the British Bulldog to the Vet?” – It is acting more like a poodle says Roger Watson
• “Why I oppose lockdowns” – Watch Neil McEvoy, Member of the Welsh Parliament and leader of the new anti-lockdown political party Propel, explain why he is against lockdown
• “Lockdowns: Do they cause more harm than good?” – Listen to Dr. Oliver Robinson talk about his interdisciplinary review of lockdowns on the Pandemic Podcast with Dan Gregory
• “Europe tightens Covid restrictions as ‘third wave’ takes hold” – The Telegraph reports on restrictions that are tightening round Europe
• “GP suspended by Medical Council over refusal to give COVID-19 vaccine” –  A County Kildare GP who refused to give COVID-19 vaccines to his patients on the grounds that they’re “untrustworthy” and “unnecessary” has been suspended by the Medical Council, the Irish Times reports
• “Angela Merkel backtracks on Easter lockdown after uproar” – Angel Merkel announced a strict lockdown over Easter and then decided that it “was not really doable”
• “There is no such thing as a public health expert” – “No one person or group can claim the mantle of public health,” writes Jordan Schachtel, “and no one person or group can claim to know what is best for the collective, just as no one leader should make devastating decisions for the ‘greater good’ of society”
• “The Six-Foot mandate was bad science” – “The scientific consensus says that three feet of social distancing is effective at reducing transmission,” says Ethan Yang in AIER. “To say that six feet is the minimum is not only unrealistic but unscientific”
• “Lockdown Tyranny: A personal retrospective” – James Bovard reflects on his contributions to AIER over the past year. Sadly he reckons, that “shutdowns could return whenever politicians can panic enough citizens with some new threat”
• “Russia’s Putin gets vaccine but without cameras” – Vlad has been impaled, the BBC reports, but decided that he wouldn’t be a “performing monkey” 
• “The futility of the great lockdown melodrama” – Government, media, politicos and academics catastrophised COVID-19, says Peter Murphy in Quadrant, but the “reality was anything but”
• “The death of Covid tyranny may be nigh” – “The dam of scepticism may be about to burst as growing numbers abandon the Covid tyranny,” writes Ramesh Thakur in Spectator Australia
• “Inside Israel’s Effort to Entice Vaccine Holdouts” – Watch the Wall Street Journal‘s report on Israel’s vaccine roll out. Volunteers touting their benefits on the streets and incentives including drinks, pizzas and tickets to basketball games
• “Mark Dolan says vaccine passports are ‘deeply wrong’ and will backfire” – Mark Dolan is not impressed with vaccine passports