News Round Up

• “‘Incredibly safe for two people to meet freely’ after Covid vaccination” – Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam said yesterday that he was “highly confident scientifically” that there were no risks if two people who had received both jabs met up, but he urged the public not to do so yet, the Telegraph reports
• “Government ‘turning blind eye’ to harm from classroom face mask policy” – Public Health England did not consider “any potential disbenefits” to wearing masks in the classroom before they recommended it, according to the Telegraph
• “Our pandemic exit strategy should be rational, not dictated by Covid anxiety” – “Covid anxiety has permeated the scientific and policy communities, as well as the general public,” writes Robert Dingwall in the Telegraph.
• “Have we reached herd immunity?” – Kate Andrews analyses the latest data from the ONS antibody survey for the Spectator. With 68.3% of the population reckoned to have antibodies, it suggests that Britain is well on the way to herd immunity
• “Academic debate was shut down during the Covid crisis. We must not let that happen again” – Academics must urgently counter the very real danger of groupthink across a range of issues, argues Professor Paul Dolan in the Telegraph. Starting with lockdowns
• “Our latest analysis of Covid vaccine reports is out now” – The ZOE Study’s analysis of vaccine efficacy and side-effects based on data from 627,383 ZOE contributors. They learned that around one in four people experience mild side effects, the most common being headaches, fatigue and tenderness around the injection site
• “How concerned should we be by the Indian variant?” – Epidemiologist Paul Hunter explains in the Spectator that although there is “certainly a theoretical reason to be concerned” about the Indian variant, “we have yet to see enough evidence that it really is a game-changer”
• “So now ‘Covid anxiety syndrome’ is a thing?” – “We can’t escape one crisis of inflated health risk by dreaming up new ways to be ill,” says Ashley Frawley in RT. “Instead, we need to refuse to see ourselves as forever patients in waiting”
• “Why the media hysteria over Covid in India?” – Harry Dougherty provides a few correctives to the hysterical coverage of India’s epidemic
• “Our new pandemic: Sleep deprivation from coronasomnia” – Kate Dunlop examines for the Conservative Woman a new health issue brought on “by Covid and its associated assaults on personal freedoms”
• “Let us pray the Christian ‘Dunkirk Spirit’ saves us from sinister science” – Mark Pickles heralds the church leaders’ letter against vaccine passports in the Conservative Woman
• “What is really happening in India?” – In the latest Pandemic Podcast, Dan Astin Gregory takes a detailed look at the data and reports coming out of India, which he says “go against the grain of the mainstream narrative we’re being presented with”
• “Short Video on India Situation: What does the Current Data Say?” – Ivor Cummins turns his attention to what is going on India
• “Is our relationship with the Government healthy?” – Looking at the way it’s developed over the last year, the Rev Phil Sacre thinks not
• “EU lawyers demand immediate access to UK-made AstraZeneca vaccines” – The European Union is demanding that AstraZeneca immediately deliver vaccines from its factory in the UK, the Telegraph reports
• “Joy Reid brags about wearing two masks while jogging outside after being fully vaccinated” – The MSNBC presenter said she wore two masks while out jogging in the park, despite being fully vaccinated, and that 95% of the people she saw were doing the same, according to the Post Millennial
• “The Everything Bubble and What it Means for Your Money” – Writing for AIER, Colin Lloyd asks if the lesson from this pandemic might be “seize the day, place no trust in money”
• “The Big Empty” – Sohrab Ahmari recounts a walk up 5th avenue for City Journal. “The lights were off; the activity had ground to a halt”
• “CDC Punishes ‘Superstar’ Scientist For Covid Vaccine Recommendation The CDC Followed Four Days Later” – The US Centres for Disease Control pulled Dr. Martin Kulldorff from a vaccine safety advisory committee after he publicly disagreed with their decision to pause the Johnson & Johnson jab, according to the Federalist
• “The High Costs of Lockdowns: An Interview with Dr. Bhattacharya” – An interview with the Stanford University Professor of Medicine on Jimmy Alfonso’s Substack blog
• “Consumers Who Want Privacy Are Finally Getting Their Way” – Apple and Google are responding to a rising demand for privacy, writes Jeffrey A. Tucker at AIER, but Governments are getting more intrusive
• “If you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I’ll go no” – Watch Joe Rogan give out vaccine advice for healthy young people – it almost got him cancelled!
• “It’s an absolute disgrace they’re not prepared to move the lockdown easing programme faster” – With 38 million people now living in areas with virtually no Covid, Hugh Osmond is frustrated by slow journey out of lockdown