News Round Up
- “Drinkers urged to take cash to the pub to beat indoor payments rules” – Once feared as a potential source of transmission, cash will be back in fashion when pubs reopen, as poor mobile signal makes outdoor card payments difficult for many pubs, the Telegraph reports
- “The delayed response of the British Psychological Society to ethical questions about covert ‘nudging’” – An update from Dr. Gary Sidley on his progress (or lack thereof) in getting a response out of the British Psychological Society to his letter about the ethics of the Government’s use of covert ‘nudging’ to increase compliance with lockdown restrictions
- “The creeping authoritarianism of the COVID-19 restrictions” – Former Special Constable Dr. Jade Norris writes in the Spectator about the Government’s ever more authoritarian Covid rules, which have made life very difficult for the police over the past year
- “Inside Liverpool’s nightclub pilot: 6,000 people with no masks and no vaccines” – A Telegraph feature on a couple of raves that will be taking place in Bramley Moore Dock Warehouse as part of the Government’s trials for live events. Tickets will be on sale next week. Anyone going, vaccinated or not, will have to take a lateral flow test, administered by a testing official, before and after
- “New Covid variants have changed the game, and vaccines will not be enough. We need global ‘maximum suppression’” – A manifesto from a bunch of Zero Covid nutters, including the Communist SAGE member Prof Susan Michie, calling for a “global strategy of maximum suppression”, with measures that include double masking and “behavioural, environmental, social and systems interventions, such as enabling ventilation, distancing between people, and an effective find, test, trace, isolate and support system”. Not a parody!
- “After dealing with officialdom’s clots, I may never again donate blood” – The Welsh blood service’s love of mask-ism has put Nicola Lund off donating for good, as she explains in the Conservative Woman
- “Chill, you Boomers, and let Covid youth have its fling” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Edward Dadd calls on the puritanical elders to ease up on the young as they let off steam after their long stretch of Covid isolation
- “Open letter from Christian Leaders to the Prime Minister concerning vaccine passports” – A group of Christian ministers have written an open letter to the Prime Minister opposing vaccine passports. “As Christian leaders…. we envisage no circumstances in which we could close our doors to those who do not have a vaccine passport,” they write. If you’re a religious leader, you too can sign it
- “The folly of mask wearing in schools” – The pupils aren’t wearing them properly and neither are the teachers, according to Leonidas, Bournbrook’s secret teacher, and their effect on learning is “grave indeed”
- “How the lockdown lobby rewrote history” – Spiked has reprinted Phillip W. Magness’s article from AIER about the lockdown zealots’ favourite conspiracy theory, namely, that Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghan and Anders Tegnell somehow got to Boris Johnson and dissuaded him from imposing a ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown in the Autumn
- “Covid vaccines – is the ‘cure’ worse than the disease?” – “The Government, the NHS and the medical and nursing professions need to be more honest about the side effects of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine,” writes Roger Watson on the Unity News Network, not to discourage people from taking it but to ensure that “every dose taken or refused is done so for the right reasons”
- “Lockdown is an assault on our humanity” – Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption appears on The Brendan O’Neill Show to explain why he is refusing to obey the “immoral” Covid restrictions
- “EU regulator to probe ethical standards of Sputnik vaccine trials” – The European Medicines Agency will launch an investigation into whether the clinical trials for Sputnik V met “good clinical practice” standards, according to the Financial Times
- “Hungary to ease lockdown despite COVID-19 surge” – Hungary has one of the highest infection rates in Europe, but it is easing its lockdown nonetheless, having administered the first dose of the vaccine to more than a quarter of its population, Euronews reports
- “I hate vaccine passports – and you should too” – Should we trust the Government, Big Tech and corporations not to abuse the power that vaccine passports would give them? “Absolutely not,” says Bridget Phetasy in Spectator USA
- “Covid: US rules out federal vaccine passports” – The BBC reports that the White House has ruled out introducing vaccine passports, with Press Secretary Jen Psaki saying that “Americans’ privacy and rights should be protected”
- “White House Backing Down On Vaccine Passports: Beginning Of The End Of The Panic?” – William Briggs reckons the White House’s announcement might be a sign of the beginning of the end of Covid hysterics. Don’t bet on it
- “The Brooklyn Variant of the Coronavirus: Fuggedaboutit” – “It is time for everyone to voluntarily catch the Brooklyn variant of the coronavirus,” write Robert M. Sauer and Donald Siegel at AIER and say “fuggedaboutit, and stop acting like a plucked chicken”
- “It’s Orwellian – bankers’ anger rises over Hong Kong Covid quarantines” – Hong Kong’s rules on quarantines are causing bankers to consider relocating, according to efinancialcareers.com
- “Lockdowns are the opiate of champagne socialists” – The biggest victims of prolonged lockdowns are children in poor countries, writes Ramesh Thakur in Spectator Australia
- “WHO does not back vaccination passports for now – spokeswoman” – The World Health Organisation does not support vaccine passports for travel, Reuters reports, due to uncertainty over whether inoculation prevents transmission of the virus, as well as equity concerns
- “COVID-19 hits those shackled by oppression hardest thanks to decades of inequalities, neglect and abuse” – Amnesty International’s annual report looks at how lockdown restrictions have hit the world’s poorest the hardest, and wreaked havoc on human rights
- “Perspectives on the Pandemic” – An interview with Dr Knut Wittkowski who warns that the lockdowns are responsible for the new variants
- “We’re seeing a ‘consistent problem’ with coronavirus modelling” – They are “out of date” and “very negative” says Prof Carl Heneghan
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From the roundup ‘Chill boomers, let Covid youth have its fling’
A response
‘To my mind locking down an entire nation to save the old and vulnerable is akin to mass evacuation of the frail and elderly during the blitz in WW2. Did they do that? No of course they didn’t.
They sent the children away to safety because they were vastly more important, because they were the future !’.
Most sensible thing I’ve read in 12 months.
Couldn’t agree more, what we’ve done to young people is truly shameful and to demonise them for sitting around chatting in a park is just madness.
Thank you. I am known to be quite sensible sometimes!
Heneghan ‘I don’t know what the government are doing with these crap models’ ( paraphrasing). I think he does, we all do….amplify the FEAR!
At least they are being honest there! It was one of their stated objectives to ‘increase the level of personal threat’. Lies are just another tool.
‘Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.‘ Batty in Bladerunner.
For anyone interested, the full Heneghan interview is at about 2:30 on the Julia Hartley-Brewer slot for 7th April.
Heneghan is always circumspect – and basically he issaying what we know – that the modelling is crapulous rubbish.
My only question with what he says is his celebration of vaccine ‘success’ (perhaps used as an emphasis on how far the government’s actions depart from its promises and, in fact, suggest that the vaccines are not effective). Similarly, he is a bit cautious on the mask-wearing issue – but I understand why that may be a professional tactic. IT is notable that his group has seen it necessary to wind its neck in a bit, if you look at the web page recent documents.
His voice on vaccines (or ‘vaccines’) is, however, one of the few that I would listen to of those advocating them. However, in terms of evidence of efficacy, I can see little difference in the shape of the April 2020 and January 2021 mortality curves as we approach the summer drop in respiratory disease.