News Round Up

• “Who needs Happy Monday? Britons start easing of lockdown rules early by thronging the nation’s beaches” – Some citizens informally brought Boris’s roadmap forward a little yesterday, according to MailOnline
• “A sober examination of the Covid data reveals there’s no reason to panic” – Case numbers are vastly below where they were in early January, says Andrew Lilico in the Telegraph, and they “continue to drift further down”
• “Do we need the Government to be free” – “We lose our freedom,” writes Tim Black at Spiked, “not because it’s taken away from us by tyrants. But because too many are willing to give it away”
• “Spare us an annual Covid Memorial Day” – “Of course we should honour frontline workers who’ve gone above and beyond,” writes Madeline Grant in the Telegraph. “But an enforced mourning ritual would hit the wrong note”
• “Weddings return on April 12th and brides and grooms can kiss even if they haven’t been living together” – Wedding celebrations for up to 15 people will be allowed again from April 12th and, quite remarkably, a Government spokesperson has had to clarify that “social distancing is not expected between the couple getting married”, according to the Sun
• “Plan to get fans in stadiums ‘has failure written all over it’” – Plans to get sports fans back into stadiums are faltering, the Sunday Times reports, as the Government is insisting that NHS testing centres be used to provide people with the necessary paperwork, rather than home tests
• “Scientist urges Chancellor to use more ‘measured language’ as England reopens” – The Independent reports that SPI-M member Dr Mike Tildesley has urged Rishi Sunack to use more measured language about reopening
• “There is no longer a justification to ban all travel after May 17th” – A Mail on Sunday editorial asks how much longer must Brits accept restrictions on international travel?
• “Vaccine policy is playing with fire” –  “we should handle the subject of an inextricably linked lockdowns/vaccination policy with much more caution, writes Dr Mark Shaw for the Conservative Woman
• “Why the vaccine passport plan is so wrong, whatever they call it” – The Conservative Woman shares readers’ responses to the Government’s call for evidence on so-called Covid-Status certification
• “Vaccines Minister hints at possibility of vaccine passport for churches” – Premier Christian News picks up on hints given by vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi that Churches may have to start checking congregants’ Covid status
• “How Johnson and his media mates created a zombie nation” – Boris Johnson has led the nation into “the impassable state of a zombie nation paralysed by conflicting schisms”, writes Nicholas Orlando in the Conservative Woman. But he reckons many ordinary Brits are quietly starting to rebel
• “The ugly truth about the COVID-19 lockdowns” – A tour de force from Nick Hudson, Cofounder of PANDA, at the BizNews Investment Conference
• “The Origin of the Species – and of our Viral Issue!” – Ivor Cummins looks into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, what “the science and data, and what IT actually tells us”
• “Church closures in Scotland overturned; The Church of England – where we are now and anti-racism taskforce report” – The three Irreverend clergymen celebrate the legal victory in Scotland against the unlawful ban on collective worship
• “Denmark prepares to break the mould by lifting lockdown once over-50s are vaccinated” – Last week, the Telegraph reports, nine of Denmark’s 10 political parties backed a plan that will see the majority of restrictions removed once all over-50s have been vaccinated in May
• “Red tape farce of the German vaccination roll-out as it emerges 80 year-olds have to fill in 10 forms just to get the jab” – Chaos characterises Germany’s vaccine rollout, according to MailOnline
• “Fully vaccinated traveller fined $3,750 for refusing hotel stay” – A Canadian, who has been in Israel for two months and was vaccinated there, has been fined for refusing hotel quarantine on his return to Canada, according to the Toronto Sun
• “Amazon, on the move in health care, is granted authorisation for its own COVID-19 test” – StatNews reports that the Megacorp has received emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for an at-home test known as the Amazon COVID-19 Collection Kit
• “A lab leak isn’t 100% certain but it seems to be the only logical source of Covid‘” – The Mail on Sunday publishes the verdict of a Washington expert who led an inquiry into the cause of the outbreak. He reveals that a couple of researchers at the Wuhan lab fell ill with Covid-like symptoms six weeks before the Chinese Government admitted there was a problem
• “Lockdowns worsen the health crisis” – Gym closures, stay-at-home orders and mask mandates damage public health, say Kiley Holiday and Jenin Younes at AIER
• “‘Unless you’re wealthy, don’t come back’: dismay over new rules for returning to New Zealand” – Expat New Zealanders are in despair, the Guardian reports, as they will now have to stay at home for six months, rather than three, to avoid the $3,100 quarantine fee. This is to make the managed isolation system “more financially sustainable”
• “Queensland scrambles to contain a growing coronavirus cluster ahead of the Easter weekend” – In Queensland, Australia, a single case of community transmission has prompted frenzied contact tracing, ABC News reports, although there’s “no suggestion from state government at this stage that a lockdown is imminent”
• “It’s ‘abundantly clear’ that ‘we’re not all in this together’” – Rita Penahi responds on Sky News Australia to recent reports that some public sector workers received handsome bonuses
• “Bringing in these Covid Status Certificates would be a paradigm shift for British society” – Watch Jake Hurfurt, Head of Research at Big Brother Watch, set out the case against vaccine passports. Big Brother Watch has an easy-to-fill-out template submission to the Vaccine Certificate Review here