News Round Up

• “Covid sufferers aren’t the only victims of the pandemic” – “Arguments as to who or what is to blame for the dramatic fall in cancer treatment over the past year is likely to rage for many years,” says Ross Clark in the Spectator. “But to blame it all on the pandemic rather than on the handling of the pandemic seems rather out of place”
• “Are MPs set to lose their favourite bar?” – The Spectator‘s Mr Steerpike hears that the Strangers Bar in the House of Commons may be set for closure, or a dramatic overhaul, in the name of Covid
• “Sniffer dogs could bolster screening at airports” – Scientists are exploring whether sniffer dogs might be used for Covid screening at airports and mass events, the BBC reports
• “Half of patients due for covid vaccine at Glasgow Hydro failed to turn up over the weekend” – As many as half of the people who were due to get jabbed at the SSE Glasgow over the weekend failed to show up, according to the Scotsman, and the local NHS service is trying to work out why
• “World’s oldest choral society accuses No 10 of strangling choirs with ‘draconian’ restrictions” – The Halifax Choral society has condemned the latest Government guidance, according to the Telegraph, because it limits indoor singing to groups of no more than six
• “Covid in Wales: Care home visiting restrictions eased” – Previously residents of care homes in Wales were only allowed to receive visits from two designated visitors, but the BBC reports they are now able to have anybody come in, provided it’s only two at a time
• “Public urged to enjoy freedoms but be sensible” – With Northern Ireland taking a step towards ending lockdown yesterday, the Irish News reports that Arlene Foster has urged the public to enjoy their new freedoms but “keep being sensible”
• “Why I will refuse to quarantine after my amber list holiday” – “I certainly won’t be locking myself away for 10 days and hiring someone else to walk my dog for me when I return from my amber list trip to Greece,” says this anonymous writer in the Telegraph
• “Dominic Cummings’ flawed lockdown fundamentalism must be challenged” – “The more Mr Cummings briefs against his former boss, and pours social media scorn on lockdown-sceptic arguments,” writes Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph, “the more he comes across as a vindictive former employee, vainly obsessed with his reputation and appearing intellectual”
• “What Cummings doesn’t understand” – Cummings paints Boris as a “lockdown-shy Libertarian secretly pursuing a heartless ‘herd immunity’ strategy”, but according to Freddie Sayers in UnHerd he is missing the point. The real question is how a “nominally libertarian Tory Prime Minister so easily confined his citizens to their homes for so long”
• “Facing up to fear” – “The use of behavioural psychology and specifically the weaponisation of fear were symptoms of a Government that had given up on trust and transparency,” writes Laura Dodsworth, as she describes the findings of her new book for the Critic
• “Black British Establishment Vaccine Evangelists Ditch Human Rights, Telling Black People to Get the Jab… Or Get Left Behind” – In an article for LeftLockdownSceptics, Rusere Shoniwa takes issue with a vaccine campaign video aimed at black people that warns them of the social consequences of not getting jabbed
• “How the vaccine can make Covid worse” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Neville Hodgkinson summarises the evidence that the effect of antibody-dependent enhancement may cause the COVID-19 vaccines to worsen the effects of the virus in some people
• “The Prime Minister’s address on new Covid measures” – William Bradbury imagines a future Prime Ministerial address in a satirical piece for the Conservative Woman
• “Defenders of children need our support” – The Conservative Woman’s Kathy Gyngell reports on two initiatives mounted in the U.S. challenging the drive to vaccinate children
• “We have been lied to about vaccine passports” – “One does not have to be to be anti-vaccination to be concerned about the potential abuse of vaccine passports,” says Roger Watson in the Unity News Network. “This is something about which the U.K. Government has consistently and demonstrably lied”
• “Child Vaccination” – In episode 5 of The Pulse by HART, Dr Ros Jones and colleagues explain why they wrote a letter to the MHRA urging the regulator not to authorise the vaccination of children
• “Wearing of masks into winter may be necessary” – The Irish Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said in the Seanad yesterday that the Government needs to be able to impose emergency restrictions, including mask wearing, into the autumn or early Winter, according to the Irish Times
• “Saudi Arabia launches crackdown on anti-vaxxers” – MailOnline reports that Saudi Arabia is cranking up pressure on those choosing not to take the vaccine, with plans to bar them from pilgrimages, universities, malls, offices and from travelling overseas
• “Malta has achieved herd immunity with Covid shots, says minister” – Malta has vaccinated 70% of its adult population, becoming, according to the Health Minister Chris Fearne, the first European Union country to reach herd immunity. Reuters reports that the island has had an average of three new cases per day over the past week
• “Quebec lifts emergency COVID-19 measures while Newfoundland expands restrictions” – Quebec is creeping out of lockdown, the Toronto Sun reports, but health officials are placing communities in north-eastern Newfoundland on the second highest alert level
• “Trump says he is now certain Covid came from the Wuhan lab and U.S. intelligence agencies have not ruled out that it was a leak” – Former President Donald Trump says he has no doubt that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Daily Mail reports
• “Gretchen Whitmer apologises for violating Michigan’s Covid rules” – The Guardian reports that the Governor of Michigan has acknowledged her award as hypocrite of the week after she was photographed in a restaurant with a dozen others, tables pressed together. “Because we were all vaccinated, we didn’t stop to think about it,” the Governor said
• “New Melbourne cases one of city’s ‘more challenging’ outbreaks, experts warn” – Contact tracers in Melbourne, Australia have scrambled to combat one of the city’s “more challenging” outbreaks, 9 News reports. Dr, Todd Cameron says that test results will determine whether tougher measures are needed. So much for Zero Covid
• “Why are so many Canadians still in favour of lockdowns?” – A video by Anthony Furey on the True North website puzzling over the Canadian public’s enthusiasm for lockdowns
• “Wuhan lab theory: Revisiting past questions” – The lab leak hypothesis was initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but as this video from the Washington Examiner shows, those who once ridiculed the idea are now coming under scrutiny
• “Are they gonna now censor Fauci and pull him down off social media?” – Governor DeSantis has critiqued the tech giants for deplatforming people who advanced the lab leak theory, a hypothesis that is now recognised as tenable