News Round-Up

• “Checking facts vs Cummings’s claims reveals major flaws in his evidence” – The Telegraph‘s science editor Sarah Knapton points out all the factual inaccuracies in Cummings’ testimony
• “Has the Covid vaccine blood clot puzzle been solved?” – Researchers at Goethe-University and Ulm University in Germany say they’ve worked out why the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs have been causing blood clots, the Daily Mail reports, and they think the problem can be fixed
• “Proms to welcome back live audiences for 52 concerts over six weeks” – According to the Guardian, the BBC is planning to hold 52 concerts with a physical audience during the Proms season this year
• “Hospital cases in Indian variant hotspots not rising fast and may peak next week” – Hospitalisations are “ticking up” in areas suffering outbreaks, but according to Mirror, not by much
• “Dominic Cummings showed that at heart he is a ruthless totalitarian” – Cummings “criticises ministers for not following the Chinese example faster than they did”, writes Jonathan Sumption in the Telegraph. “But he forgets that there were moral and not just pragmatic reasons for that”
• “It’s time for Oliver Dowden to face the music and let amateur choirs sing again” – Allison Pearson wonders in the Telegraph why it is that choirs in churches should be limited to six, while crowds of fans are permitted to chant at football stadiums
• “Covid could yet destroy Johnson. But not in the way Cummings expects” – The public doesn’t blame Boris for his “many mistakes of the past 18 months”, says Alistair Heath in the Telegraph, because “there is a widespread belief that he did his best”. But they will only put up with the side effects of lockdowns for so long
• “What a Wuhan lab leak would really mean” – Ian Birrell describes the lab leak theory’s journey from crazy conspiracy to credible hypothesis and analyses the implications of it ever being proved true in a piece for UnHerd
• “Not getting jabbed is as bad as drink driving” – In fact, as Andy Lambeth says in a post on Lockdown Satire, it’s worse. Andrew Lloyd Webber is right
• “The unseen evil of Covid restrictions … a dehumanising denial of physical contact” – “There should have been more outrage at the inhuman restrictions placed on us since March 2020,” says Frank Palmer at the Conservative Woman, arguing that the full significance of the physical restrictions have not “been deeply enough understood”
• “A dispatch from the Covid word war” – Stuart Major provides the Conservative Woman with a detailed survey of how language has been weaponised by lockdown zealots
• “How effective are vaccines on the new Covid variants?” – The latest ZOE App data from Professor Tim Spector
• “Britain’s State of Fear” – Laura Dodsworth is the guest on the latest Delingpod, telling James all about her sell-out book, A State of Fear
• “France puzzled by mystery anti-Pfizer campaign offer” – Several social media influencers in France say they have been approached by an agency, claiming to be based in the U.K., to spread negative publicity about the Pfizer jabs, according to the BBC
• “France makes quarantine compulsory for travellers arriving from U.K.” – The French authorities have decided that any travellers arriving in the country from the U.K. must go into quarantine due to fear of the Indian variant, Euronews reports
• “Greetings from ‘New Normal’ Germany!” – A postcard from the medical dystopia that is modern-day Germany by C.J. Hopkins in Off-Guardian
• “Covid in Israel may be over but border restrictions are here to stay” – As of next Tuesday, Israel will finally be freed of many of its pandemic restrictions, says Rosella Tercatin in the Jerusalem Post, but tough border rules will be in place for the foreseeable
• “Canadian soldier faces mutiny charges for trying to block vaccine distribution” – Officer cadet Ladislas Kenderesi, a reservist in Ontario, is facing charges of mutiny, according to the Guardian, after urging other soldiers not to distribute the “killer” vaccines
• “Fauci says ‘there’s no way of guaranteeing’ NIH money didn’t go to gain-of-function research at Wuhan lab” – The Post Millennial covers Fauci’s appearance at a U.S. Senate hearing where he said that he had “no way of guaranteeing” that the Chinese scientists in Wuhan did not break the conditions of the grant and use the money for gain-of-function research
• “Cheers break out in Senate after Paul amendment passes banning gain-of-function research in China” – The Senate rejoiced after passing an amendment proposed by Senator Rand Paul which bans the use of public money for gain-of-function research, the Blaze reports
• “Mild COVID-19 induces lasting antibody protection” – The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has says that people who’ve recovered from a mild bout of the disease will have immune cells in their body pumping out antibodies against the virus for months afterwards and they could last a lifetime
• “Why did the Biden administration shut down Pompeo’s lab leak probe?” – Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opened a State Department inquiry into whether COVID-19 leaked from a lab, but the Biden administration closed it down. Cockburn of Spectator USA suspects party politics were at play
• “Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity?” – “Few Americans yet recognise how badly their rulers failed them,” says James Bovard at AIER, and the more people there are that view “Government as their personal saviour, the easier it becomes for politicians to demagogue to ever greater power”
• “Thousands break Covid rules to attend horse’s funeral in India” – Up to 2,000 people in the state of Karnataka, India, most of them without masks, broke lockdown rules to attend the funeral of a horse, according to the Metro. Officials have responded by closing the state’s borders
• “Hong Kong could soon throw away millions of unused COVID-19 vaccine doses” – Hong Kong officials have warned that unused vaccine doses may be thrown away as they are approaching their expiry data and not enough people are volunteering to be vaccinated, according to Channel News Asia
• “Lockdown likely for Victoria to contain growing COVID-19 cluster” – Australia is once again reminding the world of the terrible consequences of a Covid isolation strategy, the Sydney Morning Herald reports
• “Fauci reads and reaps the political wind” – “Americans’ trust in public health institutions has slipped from over 80 to 52% since the start of the pandemic,” Ramesh Thakur notes in the Spectator Australia. The main reason he says is “the mutating variants of bureaucratic advice”
• “Don’t Worry, Everyone: The Experts Are in Charge” – A new episode of the Tom Woods Show in which Tom talks to Kathryn Huwig about why things might have been better if the experts weren’t in charge
• “Nadhim Zahawi suggested self-isolation for fully-vaccinated people could continue after June 21st” – Alan Miller, co-founder of Open for All, says its time to “get our society and our lives back”