News Round Up

• “Green light for vaccinated Britons to take overseas holidays” – Government plans in progress to allow Brits to avoid Covid tests and quarantines upon returning from travel abroad, according to the Telegraph, but only if they’ve had two jabs
• “State of Fear: how ministers ‘used covert tactics’ to keep scared public at home” – The Telegraph reports on Psychologist Gary Sidley’s complaint to the British Psychological Association about underhanded tactics used to make sure the public were frightened. He told us about it first and used Lockdown Sceptics to collect signatures. Delighted it’s making an impact
• “A truly frightening backlog’: ex-NHS chief warns of delays in vital care” – The NHS’s former boss Sir David Nicholson has warned that “patients could be waiting as much as two years for vital operations by the time of the next election due to a ‘truly frightening’ backlog of care”, the Guardian reports
• “Scottish hospitals death 2010-2020: FOI release” – According to a Freedom of Information release from the Scottish Government, 2020 saw the highest toll in Scottish hospital deaths since… 2018
• “The apocalyptic schools Covid spike predicted by scientists simply hasn’t materialised” – Modelling submitted to SAGE suggested that allowing pupils to return to school could lead to a worrying rise in cases, but, according to this Telegraph report, it hasn’t. Does this mean that when the Government “reviews” the guidance about masks in classrooms, as it promised to do this Easter, it will withdraw it?
• “Mass Covid testing in schools costing £120,000 for every positive case found” – The Telegraph reports on the comedy that is mass testing in schools. According to Professor Jon Deeks, it’s costing around £120,000 for every true case found if you allow for false positives
• “Mass testing at UK Universities is haphazard and unscientific, finds BMJ investigation” – Screening asymptomatic students for COVID-19 has “found very few positive cases since its launch in December”, a BMJ investigation has found
• “New vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists” – According to a survey of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease experts, we could have “a year or less before first generation COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective and modified formulations are needed”, the Guardian reports
• “The five things Boris must do to give us back our lives and convince me he hasn’t become the Covid Dictator of Downing Street” – Dan Wootton’s gives Boris an ultimatum in MailOnline. Item one: Pledge never to lock down the country again – under any circumstances
• “Vaccine passports and the recalibration of social ethics” – “Vaccine Passports would undermine one of the most fundamental rights in a civilised society – autonomy over one’s own body,” writes Tom Moran (Bob Moran’s brother) in the Critic
• “The resurgence of the nanny state” – Rob Lyons looks at the newly formed ‘Office for Health Protection’ for Spiked. It is, he says “as illiberal as it sounds”
• “Ostracised, for the sin of speaking my mind over Covid” – Writing in the Conservative Woman, Roger Watson tells of how he has been cut off, and worse, by colleagues, family members and friends who object to his sceptical views
• “The country is being run by SAGE not Boris” – “Vaccine passports make no sense excepts as mechanisms of social control,” writes Sean Walsh in Conservatives Global. “To everyone who puts on a mask in a shop: this was always how it was going to end up”
• “Dr Mike Yeadon on the Delingpod” – The ex-Pfizer expert returns to the Delingpod to discuss his concerns about the jab
• “Macron’s latest lockdown fiasco” – The French are “increasingly fed up with the restrictions on their lives”, writes Jonathan Miller in the Spectator. “As the weather improves, even 90,000 police may find it hard to keep them locked down”
• “It is essentially akin to solitary confinement’: UofG viral immunologist frustrated by child COVID-19 quarantine messaging” – An account in the Guelph Mercury Tribune of an Immunology’s Professor clash with the local public health authority in Guelph, Ontario over their advice that he should put his healthy child into solitary quarantine
• “CDC walks back claim that vaccinated people can’t carry COVID-19” – On Wednesday, CDC chief Rachelle Walensky said that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick”, the New York Post reports, but the CDC has since clarified that she was “speaking broadly”. Reminds us of Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe: when someone inadvertently blurts out the truth
• “Professor Gupta: Lockdowners Should Hang their Heads in Shame” – The AIER has produced a transcript of Professor Sunetra’s Gupta’s recent interview on How Are You Sweden?
• “The Lockdowners have their own conspiracy theories” – Writing for the AIER, Phillip W. Magness looks at the conspiracy theory which has taken root among lockdowners, namely, that Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan persuaded Boris not to go for a circuit-breaker lockdown last September
• “Pandemic policy has not improved our lifestyle” – “It’s become quite common to find silver linings to the pandemic,” writes Joakim Book at AIER, but we must not deceive ourselves. Lockdowns have not improved our lives
• “Everyone is a libertarian at the end of a pandemic” – Maybe “we’ll start describing a libertarian as an American who’s been paying attention”, writes Grace Curley, looking back at the year gone by for Spectator USA
• “California’s failed response to Covid” – Professor Jay Bhattacharya and Professor Martin Kulldorff have written a joint piece for the Hoover Institution on California’s response to Covid and how it protected the wealthy at the expense of the poor
• “The never-ending strategy of lockdowns and vaccines” – Watch Speaking Naturally‘s interview with Dr Knut Wittkowski, covering lockdowns, vaccines and mutant variants
• “Dr Scott Atlas unloads on Fauci, Birx, Walensky and mask mandates” – The former White House advisor appears on the Larry O’Conner Show, taking the various bureaucrats to task for their false claims and “impending doom” hysterics
• “Working to replace bad science with good science” – PANDA Co-founder Nick Hudson makes an appearance on the Ricochet Podcast, home to the London Calling podcast