News Round Up

• “There will be no third wave of deaths – and I should know” – Professor Philip Thomas explains in the Daily Mail why he thinks that SAGE is being unduly pessimistic
• “How worried should we be about the Indian variant?” – Ross Clark weighs up the evidence for the Spectator
• “Majority of secondary pupils return after Easter break” – The BBC reports that Scotland’s secondary school kids will have gone back to school yesterday. For most of them, it will be their first full week in classrooms since before Christmas
• “No 10’s extreme terror of mutants risks keeping Britain locked down forever” – Sherelle Jacobs argues in the Telegraph that the Government should stop running scared of the variants
• “Naive home workers are risking their jobs” – According to a Deloitte survey, almost one in four want to work from home forever. Kate Andrews in the Telegraph thinks they could end up unemployed
• “One in four venues trading in English hospitality’s first week of outdoor service” – Just under a quarter of England’s licensed venues opened last week, according to figures from CGA and AlixPartners
• “British pubs have been pushed to the brink” – “The chance to enjoy a drink in a beer garden did not bring as much joy to publicans’ hearts as it did to their customers,” writes Julia Hartley Brewer for Spectator Life. “Indeed, the partial reopening of hospitality venues has been a cruel double-edged sword for many”
• “Ten reasons to be cheerful about the future of Covid” – Writing in CAPX, Jon Moynihan offers 10 reasons to be optimistic about the threat Covid poses to our future. Many of them will be familiar to readers of Lockdown Sceptics
• “Why do pictures of busy outdoor pubs still trigger panic about COVID-19?” – “We know that outdoor transmission is essentially non-existent,” reflects Sarah Manavis in the New Statesman, “so why are images of people distancing in beer gardens met with sneering online?”
• “How long before we don’t know how to be virtuous?” – “‘Nobody is safe until everyone is safe’ is the latest phase in the capture of virtue that has been the most profound effect of Covid,” writes Dr. Sinéad Murphy in the Conservative Woman
• “A doctor’s fears about the vaccine cleared for UK pregnant woman” – The Conservative Woman reprints an open letter from a Canadian doctor to the health officer of his state setting out his concerns about the Moderna jab
• “How utterly selfish of adults vaccinating children needlessly” – “The interests of children are being subsumed to the interests of adults,” says Tim Wells in the Conservative Woman
• “Whistleblowing on the ‘overrun’ NHS” – On the Pandemic Podcast, Dan Astin Gregory interviews Kirsty Miller, a nurse who quit the NHS after raising concerns about its response to Covid
• “Italy to ease coronavirus restrictions ahead of schedule” – Italy is following a data-not-dates approach, Politico reports
• “Visitors jabbed with Pfizer, Moderna to get green pass” – Israel will grant tourists with the Pfizer or Moderna jab a ‘green pass’ after they present their vaccine certificate and take an antibody test, according to the Jerusalem Post. They are working out a plan for those who took other jabs
• “Canadians deserve to see the science behind COVID-19 lockdowns” – When asked directly to provide the specific medical and scientific evidence of lockdown, the Canadian authorities at every level “simply stonewall”, argues John Carpay in the Post Millennial
• “The lockdown paradigm is collapsing” – The theory and practice of lockdown-ism is imploding, reckons Jeffrey A. Tucker at AIER
• “NBC’s vapid vax propaganda ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ was entirely ineffective in restoring faith in the medical establishment” – NBC aired a one-hour special entitled Roll Up Your Sleeves intended to inspire viewers to get a Covid vaccination. It “was the most inane and insulting of infomercials” says Michael McCaffrey in RT
• “Delhi announces lockdown as India’s cases surge” – The BBC reports that Delhi is to lockdown for a week
• “Fears for foreign athletes as fourth Covid wave surges in Japan” – Olympic training camps for foreign athletes are being scrapped, according to the Times, as case numbers rise in Japan
• “By Australia’s mad logic, I will never get to see my father again” – Annabel Fenwick Elliott spells out the implications of Australia’s zero-Covid policy in the Telegraph
• “Global Covid cases hit weekly record, despite vaccinations” – Bloomberg reports that, globally, more people were diagnosed with Covid during the last seven days than in any other week since the start of the pandemic
• “Perspectives on the Pandemic | “Blood Clots and Beyond” – Professor Sucharit Bhakdi appears on the Journeyman Pictures YouTube channel to explain the science behind the blood clots
• “Canadians Morse code ‘SOS’ at US border as ‘tyrannical’ government cracks down on lockdowns, videos show” –The Washington Examiner highlights social media videos showing Canadians gathering at Niagara Falls and signalling to their friends across the border for help