News Round-Up

•  “UK vaccine passport plans to be scrapped” – Plans to make COVID-19 passports a legal requirement for large events are set to be dropped, the Telegraph understands, as ministers go cool on the idea
• “Boris Johnson Will Push For Vaccine Passports With Other World Powers To Restore Global Travel” – Boris said on Sunday in an interview on Canadian television in the run up to the G7 meeting that the world’s top economies must collaborate on a system for vaccine passports for international travel, Forbes reports
• “British WHO scientist dismisses Wuhan lab Covid leak claims as conspiracy theories” – Dr Peter Daszak, who was part of the WHO team investigating the origins of the virus, has said he sympathised with the Chinese government for refusing to give “oxygen” to “conspiracy theories” about the lab leak, the Telegraph reports. However, he has been accused of having a conflict on interest due to his involvement with EcoHealth, which has been funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology for a number of years
• “Ministers want all over-50s to get second Covid jabs by June 21st” – Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi wants all over-50s to get their second jabs by the 21st, MailOnline reports
• “Parents are already contacting lawyers getting ready to sue ahead of this year’s expected A-level grades row” – Exams have been cancelled this year for the second time and, according to MailOnline, some parents are already contacting lawyers in case their children’s grades aren’t as high as they’d hoped
• “BBC Covid distancing sensor devices beset by noise and fire safety issues” – The BBC purchased thousand of proximity sensors in January to help its staff comply with social distancing rules, but now, the Guardian reports, they have to deal with fears that the body-worn electronic devices could spontaneously combust
• “Euro 2020 fan zones poised to go ahead in Glasgow despite threat from Indian coronavirus variant” – Deputy First Minister John Swinney has said that football fans will be allowed to gather in Glasgow during the Euro 2020 tournament provided efforts to suppress the Indian variant are sustained, according to the Telegraph
• “Vaccine clot patients ‘closely monitored’ as they may remain at risk, experts warn” – Leading haematologist Dr Sue Pavord has warned that people who suffer the clotting side effect linked to the AstraZeneca jab may continue to be at risk for several months, the Telegraph reports
• “How the state used behavioural science to scare a nation into submission” – We need to move away from the “authoritarian, top-down ‘state knows best’ style of Government,” says Laura Dodsworth in the Telegraph. “It does not befit one of the cradles of democracy and the British people deserve better”
• “The smearing of anti-lockdown protests” – Laura Dodsworth reports on Saturday’s anti-lockdown protest in London for Spiked and for the third time she has been “slack-jawed by the lack of honesty in how the media misrepresents the scale and purpose of these protests”
• “On the march at yesterday’s anti-lockdown protest” – “They showed up in their hundreds of thousands. Young and old, from every race and creed,” says Sonia Elijah, reporting on Saturday’s anti-lockdown protest in the Conservative Woman. “It felt like New Year’s Eve on steroids”
• “Our vaccine rebuttal competition – Honourable mentions, Part 3” – The Conservative Woman publishes a third batch of entries to its competition to find the best rebuttal to the vaccine
• “The ‘New Normal’ Lexicon” – Ian Jenkins provides a selection of extracts from the “The New Normal Lexicon” by Professor ‘Greta Reset’ for Off-Guardian
• “Tom Woods” – Thomas Ernest Woods Jr., the U.S. lockdown sceptic, is the guest on the latest Delingpod
• “Covid, Cummings and Corporate News” – The Bournbrook contributors dissect the revelations from Dominic Cummings in the latest episode of Week in Review
• “Thousands protest in Brussels against COVID restrictions” – Photographs from Saturday’s anti-lockdown demonstrations in Brussels, published in Euronews
• “Covid lockdowns have made young Germans more lonely” – In new survey of 16 to 29 year-olds carried out in Germany, 56% of respondents said they “frequently” felt lonely during lockdown with young women being the most affected, Deutsche Welle reports
• “Study identifies antibody from common cold infection that reacts to Covid” – According to the results of a new study reported in the Jerusalem Post, Americans who have been exposed to coronaviruses that were prevalent in the U.S. before the Covid, may benefit from a common-cold antibody that is triggered if they are infected with SARS-CoV-2, or indeed, SARS-CoV-1
• “Shutdowns Were A Disaster” – “Harsh shutdowns caused enormous damage to millions of lives and gained nothing in terms of public health,” John Hinderaker argues in Powerline
• “The Media’s Covid Failure” – “In dismissing the possibility that the virus leaked from a lab, journalists betrayed their mission to seek the truth,” writes Zaid Jilani in Persuasion
• “A Conversation on Scientific Censorship in Canada” – Dr. Patrick Phillips, an outspoken physician based in Ontario, joins Ethan Yang in the AIER’s Authors’ Corner to discuss the damage lockdowns have done to academic truth, mental health and the credibility of medical institutions
• “Why Cause-of-Death Stats Aren’t as Reliable as the CDC Wants You to Think” – Ryan McMaken explains in Mises Wire why there is every reason to be sceptical of death certificate data in the U.S. which have been used to justify lockdowns
• “Court rules Gov. Whitmer recall petitions can proceed in Michigan” – Michigan Governor Getchen Whitmer – a lockdown zealot – is facing a recall petition, BizPacReview reports
• “In visions of post-pandemic life, Roaring ’20s beckon again” – “Visions of a second ‘roaring Twenties’ to match the last century’s post-pandemic decade have proliferated,” the Associated Press says, as Covid ebbs away in the U.S. and Europe
• “Kenya extends COVID-19 curfew by 60 days” – Reuters reports that Kenya has extended its nightly curfew and its ban on political gatherings and processions for a further 60 days in order slow the spread of COVID-19
• “Why has China been given such an easy ride over COVID-19?” – “We have spent the last year lambasting our own Gvernment over the handling of the pandemic,” writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph, yet “the country where it all began has escaped almost any kind of censure”
• “Dozens of exposure sites added as authorities hunt origin of mystery case” – 9News with the latest on the situation in Melbourne in Australia where a care home has gone into a deep lockdown after a worker tested positive, with residents confined to their rooms
• “Vaccine inequality exposed by dire situation in world’s poorest nations” – A feature in the Guardian on the difficulties in delivering vaccine rollouts in poorer countries
• “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns” – A trailer for an Epoch Times documentary on Governor Ron DeSantis’s response to lockdowns
• “There has been global virtue signalling. This pandemic is when science met politics and politics won” “What we’ve been witnessing throughout the pandemic,” says Dr John Lee, “is not governments around the world trying to look after their populations; it’s governments around the world trying to avoid blame”