News Round-Up

• “Winter Covid surge on the way, Chris Whitty warns” – According to the Times, Chris Whitty told the NHS Confederation’s annual conference that while the forecast was “a lot better than it was”, there were “really quite a lot of things that we need to worry about particularly I think this next surge, and then going into the following winter”
• “Hospitals undertook 1.6m fewer operations last year because of Covid” – Researchers have warned that some cancer patients will die as a result of widespread suspension of normal NHS care, the Guardian says, and other patients are less likely to improve after treatment
• “Don’t force us back into office, say civil servants” – The Public and Commercial Services Union has declared that it will not rule out industrial action if the Government attempts to order civil servants back to the office before the Covid rates are cut, the BBC reports
• “NHS backlog twice as big as we had thought, admits Matt Hancock” – Matt Hancock has warned that the NHS is facing “biggest pressure in history” with 12.2 million patients in need of treatment, the Telegraph reports
• “Rees-Mogg leaps to defence of ‘successful genius’ Matt Hancock” – Jacob Rees-Mogg has come to the defence of Matt Hancock, according to the Guardian, hailing him as a “successful genius” and dismissing Dominic Cummings remarks as “flotsam and jetsam”
• “Inflation a ‘serious risk’, says Treasury minister Jesse Norman” – The Times reports on Treasury minister Jesse Norman’s comments that inflation could pose a “serious risk” to the economy, following the news that price rises shot up to 2.1% last month
• “Ferret owners urged to register animals to help prevent new Covid variants spreading” – Owners of ferrets, weasels and minks in Wales are being urged to sign up to a new voluntary register to help contain any possible outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2, according to Nation Cymru
• “Facebook VP Nick Clegg Admits ‘Fact-Checkers’ Could Be Politically Biased” – Breitbart reports Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg’s recent admission that the company’s fact-checkers could be biased and pursuing their own political agenda
• “We must think about the impact testing children is having on their education” – In an interview with the Telegraph, Sir Andrew Pollard, of the Oxford Vaccine Group, casts doubt on the wisdom of mass testing for children
• “‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’: Do we need a WFH wake-up call?” – “If you thought an extra month of lockdown meant a reprieve from returning to the office, your career is in for a nasty shock,” according to Ross Clark in the Telegraph
• “Britain is paying a high price for the Government’s reluctance to ease travel restrictions ” – “The U.K. is becoming an international outlier in its approach to travel,” says this leader in the Telegraph
• “It’s time to junk the Covid models” – “We cannot allow these models to continue to dictate how we live our lives,” writes Fraser Myers in Spiked, responding to the news that projections used at Monday’s press conference relied on “out-of-date and hopelessly pessimistic data”
• “Nerd immunity is the way forward” – Behind Boris’s dithering there lies a “cunning plan”, Andy Lambeth suggests on Lockdown Satire
• “Matt Hancock hints NHS has a decreased duty of care for anti-vaxxers” – Off-Guardian’s Kit Knightly responds to Matt Hancock’s suggestion in Parliament that the NHS could prioritise care for people who’ve been “vaccinated” if there were to be an “overwhelming demand” on its services
• “Lockdowns do work – but not at successfully stopping any virus. Financial collapse is inevitable” – Lockdowns are “successful for destroying economies” says Jennifer Arcuri
• “Charles Walker: We must curb the power of unelected SAGE” – The Conservative Woman’s Kathy Gyngell sings the praises of Charles Walker MP who called in parliament for SAGE to face elections. Mr Steerpike of the Spectator enjoyed it as well
• “Vaccine victim’s funeral on the day she should have wed” – Sally Beck tells the sad story of Lucy Taberer, who died suffering from an adverse reaction to the AstraZeneca jab on her wedding day
• “Manufacturing a crisis” – An item in the latest newsletter from the Health Advisory and Recovery Team debunking Boris’s case for extending lockdown, sentence by sentence
• “Science without debate is dogma” – The HART group rails against YouTube’s censorship of its content and that of others who have challenge the official consensus on the pandemic. “Science without question and discussion is not science,” they write. “It is merely a belief”
• “The legality of the lockdown” – Francis Hoar, who was counsel in a number of high profile court hearings last year challenging the legality of the lockdown, is the guest on Sketch Notes On A Pandemic with Lucy Johnston
• “‎CoronaStories: The Rev Dr William Philip” – ‎William Philip, previously a medical doctor and now a minister at Tron Church, is the guest on the latest CoronaStories podcast, sharing his perspective on lockdown and the Christian faith in 2021
• “France lifts rules on face masks and nighttime curfew” – “France is lifting its requirement to wear face masks outdoors in public and will bring its night time curfews to an end earlier than planned, according to Euronews
• “Berlin to ease restrictions on nightclubs this week” – “Berlin’s clubs will open their doors tonight,” DJ Mag reports, but anyone going clubbing will be required to provide a negative COVID-19 test and wear a mask while on the dance floor
• “Lisbon residents confined to region at weekends as Covid spikes” – Residents of the Lisbon region will not be allowed to leave the area at weekends, according to Reuters, as authorities scramble to control a spike in COVID-19 infections
• “COVID-19 might be over, but viral infections in Israel are surging” – All over Israel adults and children are getting sick with viral infections in a phenomenon that is unprecedented for this time of the year, the Jerusalem Post reports
• “The latest on covid vaccine adverse events” – A vaccine safety update from the Swiss Doctor
• “Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine Maker Promises Delta Variant Boosters to Rivals” – The  Gamaleya Institute, which produce the Sputnik V jab, has said it will offer rival manufacturers a booster shot that is effective against the Indian variant, the Moscow Times reports
• “Moscow mayor says new Covid variants in city more aggressive” – Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin has warned that the new mutations of the virus are harder to recover from and more infectious, MailOnline says, with several strains apparently more resistant to the country’s main vaccine
• “‘We are COVID-free’: Toronto hospital ICU has 0 COVID patients for the first time since March 2020” – The Medical Surgical Intensive Care Unit in Toronto, as of Wednesday night, has zero COVID-19 patients for the first time since March 26th 2020, the Post Millennial reports
• “Fighting Invisible Enemies” – Societies are “forever stuck fighting invisible enemies” says Joakim Book at AIER. “COVID-19, or its many offshoots, are just the latest enemies to the party
• “Pandemic Emergency Spending Riddled With Fraud” – Writing for the AIER, Daniel J. Mitchell rounds up some of the incidents of fraud and waste in the U.S. Government’s pandemic spending
• “A Conversation On Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery” – In the latest episode of the AIER’s Author’s Corner, Ethan Yang speaks to Australian researcher Dr. Darcy Allen, the author of a new book entitled How to Create a High Growth Economy After the Pandemic
• “The ill-advised push to vaccinate the young” – “The idea that everyone must be vaccinated against COVID-19 is as misguided as the anti-vaxx idea that no one should,” say Professor Martin Kulldorff and Professor Jay Bhattacharya in the Hill
• China must come clean on the origins of COVID-19” – “The long suppression of a free and open discussion on the lab-leak story has cast an unflattering light on institutions in the world’s most powerful democracy that control the dissemination of information that shape public debate,” writes Brahma Chellaney in Nikkei Asia
• “Pfizer Vaccine Authorised, Data Sight Unseen” – Australia’s Therapeutics Goods Administration approved the Pfizer jab without seeing or requesting the raw data from the company’s trials. It simply accepted their report, the Doctors for Covid Ethics group has discovered
• “Are the COVID-19 vaccines “safe and effective”?” – A video presentation by Steve Kirsch, Executive Director of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, on TrialSiteNews
• “Journalist Emily Hill wants a referendum on lockdown” – “It was all done to save and preserve the NHS,” says Emily Hill. “The NHS waiting list is five million long”