News Round-Up

• “A ‘new level of baffling’ as Scots are banned from Manchester” – Scots are not allowed to go to Manchester or Salford for “non-essential reasons”, as they are virus hotspots, but they are free to go to Dundee, which is also a virus hotspot, according to the Telegraph
• “Tartan Army’s night of carnage: Scotland fans trash Leicester Square” – Huge numbers of Scotland fans massed together in Leicester Square, MailOnline reports. They knew from the G7 meeting that they didn’t need to worry about social distancing
• “Brits in 30s now more risk of Covid than blood clots from AZ jab” – The risk/benefit analysis is swinging round to favour giving the AstraZeneca jab to people in their 30s, according to MailOnline
• “Andrew Lloyd Webber backs down over threat to reopen theatres at full capacity” – The former Tory peer was warned that his entire staff and the audience could have been fined hundreds of pounds each, according to the Telegraph
• “Yorkshire dad facing prison in Singapore for not wearing mask on train” – Benjamin Glynn, from Helmsley, faces up to six months in prison, according to YorkshireLive, for his failure to wear a mask while on the train home from work in Singapore
• “Deloitte tells staff they can work from home forever” – Homeworking forever a reality at the top accountancy firm, the Telegraph reports
• “None of us knows how long we’ll live so we’ll take our chances and flee the country to see our son” – Writing in the Telegraph, Guy de la Bédoyère, a contributor to Lockdown Sceptics, explains why he is jetting off to Mexico
• “Pupils forced to isolate after Covid test result wrongly recorded as positive” – Staff and pupils at Warren School, a special needs school in Lowestoft, were warned to self-isolate after a negative test was recorded as positive online, the East Anglian Daily Times records
• “Bloomsbury staff must be vaccinated before office return” – The publisher Bloomsbury has decided that all its staff must be vaccinated before they return to the office in July, according to the Bookseller
• “Against Vaccine Passports” – A directory of businesses that believe the enforcement of identity barriers or passports for entry will create division and discrimination
• “The global elites’ exemption from travel restrictions will become a problem for the Tories” – “There is no ‘for all’ about the society that our leaders are building in the wake of Covid,” writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph about the Government’s decision to allow in 2,500 UEFA VIPs to attend the final fo the Euros without having to quarantine. “Rather it is one in which the gap between the powerful and people over whom they wield their power is growing wider than it has been for decades”
• “Science journals, Wuhan and a truly bizarre Twitter episode” – Matt Ridley casts a critical eye over the role played by scientific journals and their reporters in the debate about the origins of SARS-CoV-2
• “The joylessness of the Covid-secure wedding” – Writing in Spiked, Ella Whelan takes aim at the absurd rules confronting those trying to plan a wedding
• “The lockdown lobby” – Spiked’s Tom Slater examines how COVID-19 exposed the conformism of Britain’s media in his contribution to the People’s Lockdown Inquiry
• “We are hostages to Government fear” – “Having once offered itself as the strong, paternalistic shield against Covid, the Government will find it hard to back away,” writes Timandra Harkness in UnHerd
• “The roadmap to enslavement” – “It is necessary to understand all this in exclusively political terms and abandon any pretence to the contrary,” writes Daniel Miller in the Conservative Woman. “The ‘delay’ to the end of restrictions is not a delay; freedom won’t arrive in July either”
• “Our neverending lockdown” – In the latest podcast from Spiked, contributors Tom Slater, Ella Whelan and Fraser Myers wonder if they are ever likely to get their old lives back
• “A whole new level of lunacy” – Latest episode of the Planet Normal podcast from the Telegraph in which Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan discuss the risk of a winter lockdown with guest Iain Duncan Smith
• “Lockdown has turned us back to superstition” – Rev Phill Sacre explains how he thinks the lockdown narrative has taken us back to a pre-scientific way of thinking
• “Truth and Deception: The Conscience of Public Health” – In his latest podcast, Omar Khan interviews Dr Tess Lawrie, Director of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy, about her enthusiasm for ivermectin and her “stand against the flight from facts on the vaccine front”
• “Restaurants body initiates lawsuit over ‘discriminatory’ COVID-19 dining regulations” – A body representing more than 2,500 restaurants and gastropubs is taking the Irish State to court over rules allowing hotel restaurants to open in full while other establishments can only serve customers outdoors, the Independent reports
• “AstraZeneca claims victory over EU in vaccine deliveries case, but will be fined for late supplies” – Both sides have claimed victory from the EU court ruling that AstraZeneca does not have to supply 100 million COVID-19 vaccines by the end of June, CITY AM reports
• “Spain follows France in lifting outdoor face mask rules” – As of June 26th, it will no longer be mandatory in Spain to wear a mask while outdoors, Euronews reports. The rule was first introduced in May 2020 and applies to everyone over the age of six
• “One in four Covid patients hospitalised while vitamin D deficient die” – A study carried out in a hospital in Galilee in Israel found that COVID-19 patients are more likely to die if vitamin D-deficient, the Times of Israel says. Twenty-six per cent of vitamin D-deficient Covid patients died, compared to 3% of the rest
• “Re-Evaluating Mask Mandates Part I: Science Gives Way to the Talisman” – A reminder from Masha V. Krylova in C2C Journal that the effectiveness of masking against COVID-19 is not scientifically proven.
• “Rumours swirl that China’s top spycatcher has defected to the U.S.” – If Dong Jingwei has jumped, the Telegraph says, he would be the most high-profile Chinese official to do so, and could aid the U.S. in Wuhan lab leak investigations
• “Donald Trump criticises vaccines for American children aged over 12” – Donald Trump has attacked the U.S. Government’s drive to vaccinate school-aged children, the Times reports, on the grounds that younger people are normally unaffected by the virus
• “Whitmer rescinds Michigan’s gathering, mask rules starting Tuesday” – Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a lockdown zealot, has announced the easing of restrictions in the state of Michigan, the Detroit News reports
• “The Origin of SARS-CoV-2” – David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper take a close look at the evidence for AIER and conclude that the ‘lab-leak’ theory is the best fit
• “‘I remember it very well’: Dr. Fauci describes a secret 2020 meeting to talk about COVID-19 origins” – Alison Young in USA Today investigates the secret conference call on February 1st, 2020 in which Dr. Fauci discussed the possibility that the virus was engineered with an international group of scientists
• “Uganda imposes new anti-coronavirus measures to stem raging pandemic” – Uganda’s president Yowreri Museveni has introduced sweeping new anti-coronavirus measures including a ban on all vehicular movement except for essential workers, according to Reuters, to help curb a second wave of COVID-19
• “Prolonged lockdown not solution to end pandemic” – The Mokokchung Chamber of Commerce in India has called for a fresh approach to COVID-19, according to the Morung Express, stating that “the price of flattening the curve should not be costlier than the pandemic itself, or the cure worse than the problem”
• “Hundreds of vaccinated Indonesian health workers get COVID-19, dozens in hospital” – More than 350 Indonesian medical workers have become infected with COVID-19, Reuters reports, and dozens of them have been hospitalised despite having been given the Sinovac jab
•  “Tough Questions and Sense-Checking” – Reflections from Australian economist Cameron K. Murray on debate and censorship in discussions about lockdown, following a TV appearance that did not go well
• “New Zealand PM Ardern gets ‘pain-free’ COVID-19 vaccine shot” – Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was smiling under her mask as she received her first shot of the Pfizer jab, Reuters reports
• “Head of NHS asked if Matt Hancock is hopeless” – Sir Simon Stevens couldn’t quite bring himself to answer