News Round-Up

• “Vaccines ‘highly effective’ against the Indian coronavirus variant” – Public Health England has “changed its tone”, the Telegraph says, and now hail real world data showing double doses of the jabs to be “nearly as effective against the emerging Indian strain as they were against the Kent variant”
• “Millions ‘unwittingly tracked’ by phone after vaccination to see if movements changed” – Phone data of people who’d been vaccinated were tracked in February without their owners’ express knowledge, the Telegraph has learned, for SPI-B research into people’s behaviour post vaccination
• “Sewage testing ramped up in England” – The BBC reports that the Government has accelerated its programme analysing wastewater for signs of the coronavirus, with sewage testing now taking place in over two thirds of the country
• “Dangerous Dominic Cummings just wants to be proved right” – Dominic Cummings is to give evidence to MPs about the Government’s handling of coronavirus, and “the ultimate data geek will deploy everything to win the argument” says Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times
• “No 10 ‘tried to block’ data on spread of new Covid variant in English schools” – According to the Observer, Downing Street leaned on Public Health England not to publish data relating to the spread of the Indian variant in schools ahead of its decision to drop masks from classrooms
• “M&S profit seen crashing 90% in ‘lost year’ of pandemic” – Marks & Spencer is set to report a pre-tax profit before one-off items of £43 million for its year to April 3rd, according to Reuters, down from £403 million in 2019-20
• “Why do we still tell people to isolate – even after two jabs?” – Pat Fagan in the Mail On Sunday asks why people who have had both jabs are still being asked to isolate by the Test and Trace system when evidence suggests that they are unlikely to pass the virus on
• “America has chosen to be free. Why hasn’t Britain?” – “America is on the move,” says Douglas Carswell in the Telegraph. “Flights are full. Bars and restaurants are flourishing.” Meanwhile, “Britain dithers about whether to fully re-open on June 21st”
• “Vaccines: truth, lies, and controversy” – Sebastian Rushworth reviews and recommends a book by Peter Gotzsche which slaughters the sacred cows of both the pro- and anti-vaccine camps
• “Of Chainsaws and Moralism: What Does the Covid Moment Tell us About the Contemporary Left?” – Covid was a challenge for “the politics of resistance, struggle and change,” and one which “the left has failed disastrously”, says Keith Johnson at LeftLockdownSceptics
• “The pandemic has revolutionised public data and there’s no turning back” – In an article published on the ONS website, Professor Sir Ian Diamond celebrates the “gains of the pandemic” in the recording and use of public data and points to its potential to provide “much faster answers to all of the big questions about our economy and society”
• “Waggle your eyebrows, lockdown lovers!” – A story of a conversation with a masked-up lockdown enthusiast by Mavis Despond on the Conservative Woman
• “It’s up to us to resist the insanity of the new normal” – An insightful dialogue between Daniel Miller and the American playwright C.J. Hopkins on the present moment in history and the forthcoming ‘new normal’
• “No Deaths, No Pubs and No Standards” – The team at Bournbrook look back at the week gone by, taking in the hysteria over the Indian variant and the death of the British pub, for the 20th episode of The Week in Review
• “James and Laura’s Chinwag #21” – For the 21st time, James Delingpole and Laura Perrins give it both barrels on the subjects of lockdown and Boris Johnson’s premiership
• “Coronavirus: One death as daily figure falls to double digits again” – The Cyprus Mail reports that one person in the country was reported to have died from Coronavirus yesterday, a 95 year-old being treated at Nicosia General Hospital
• “Saskatoon police aim to crack down on pandemic-restriction protests by outing attendees” – CBC reports that police in Saskatoon shared 41 photographs of people who attended the May 9th ‘freedom rally’ and asked the public to help identify them
• “Their lives haven’t changed since getting vaccinated. This is their new normal” – CNN interviews fully vaccinated members of the public who intend to keep their masks on. “I think it’s crazy that they are loosening these restrictions so wildly,” says Kimberly. “I don’t see myself giving up the mask in public for a long while”
• “Frontline doctors file motion to stop FDA authorisation of Covid vaccines for children” – America’s Frontline Doctors have filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama “to prevent the expansion of the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) for COVID-19 vaccines to include children under the age of 16”, LifeSite News reports
• “Some Chicago Restaurants To Create ‘Vaccinated Only’ Sections Allowed Under New City COVID-19 Guidance” – Chicago restaurant owners are hoping to ease concerns people may have about dining out by creating areas reserved for vaccinated people only, according to CBS
• “California Governor Newsom Ordered to Pay $1.35M in Legal Fees for Shutting Down Churches” – CBN news reports that a court in California has approved a case brought by church groups against Gavin Newsom, introducing the first state-wide injunction in the U.S. against Covid restrictions on churches and places of worship
• “Florida and DeSantis Defy COVID-19 and the Critics” – “As the country tries to recover from the pandemic… Florida is way ahead of just about every other state in the U.S.,” says Joe Nocera in Bloomberg. “The reason, of course, is that in Florida, the pandemic is being treated as ancient history”
• “We cannot let the WHO re-write the pandemic history” – “The organisation’s about-turn on lockdowns has not gone unnoticed,” says Toby Green in UnHerd
• “Science has become a cartel” – Writing in UnHerd, Matthew Crawford examines why the medical establishment initially dismissed the ‘lab-leak’ theory
• “Vaccine Coercion – Professor. Risch and Dr. McCullough Speak Out” – An episode of the Ingraham Angle covering the U.S. vaccination campaign’s entry into “creepy coercion territory” with Professor Harvey Risch and Dr. Peter McCullough
• “How To Create An Epidemic” – “Is an epidemic always a true epidemic?”, asks Dr Sam Bailey in her latest video. “Or perhaps, is the anatomy of the alleged epidemic something completely different from what is being widely portrayed?”
• “Lockdown has taken away freedoms & liberties from the public” – The next broadcast from UnlockedTV is an interview with Peter Hitchens