News Round-Up

• “Matt Hancock kept Boris Johnson in dark over Covid vaccines success” – According to the Sunday Telegraph, Health Secretary Matt Hancock failed to share positive data from a Public Health England study about the effectiveness of the jabs against the Delta variant in the run up to the decision to delay ‘freedom day’
• “Hospitalisations rising at a third of the pace of September’s second Covid wave” – The third wave is definitely underway, the Telegraph says, but hospitalisations are not rising as fast as they did at the beginning of the second wave
• “G7 was ‘super spreading’ event in Cornwall as cases go up 2,450% after Johnson summit” – The latest data suggests that the G7 meeting was a super spreader event that has been followed by a sharp increase in the number of infections in nearby communities according to inews
• “Tory figures claim Freedom Day delay affected by-election result” – Some Tory Ministers are laying the blame for the party’s recent defeat in the Chesham and Amersham by-election on the extension of lockdown, according to the Mail On Sunday
• “Are PCR tests the best way to track Covid?” – Writing in the Spectator, Ross Clark reports on the latest doubts about the value of mass PCR testing
• “Ministers ‘not obeying Covid rules’” – “The images of last weekend’s G7 summit in Cornwall have, I believe, turned the tide in the nation’s mood about the pandemic,” says Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Mail On Sunday. “They proved to millions of Britons that the long-perpetrated mantra of ‘we’re all in this together’ under lockdown restrictions is a lie”
• “Britain can’t be a nation of Covid neurotics forever ” – “The British people are not stupid,” says Dr. Liam Fox in the Mail on Sunday. “They know that the world cannot be closed down and that, sooner or later, we will have to learn to live with COVID-19 just as we have learned to live with other viral illnesses over time”
• “Covid-segregated schooling” – “Mass vaccination of children is yet another intervention suggested to protect adults at the expense of children,” writes Molly Kingsley in the Critic, taking up the cudgels against the proposal to vaccinate children as a precondition of opening schools in full in September
• “Vaccine twaddle from a right Charlie” – “I am so glad that Charlie Mullins, celebrity plumber, isn’t in charge of the country,” writes Michael Fahey for the Conservative Woman. “He may be a good businessman but he is not qualified to spout the nonsense we’ve heard over the last few months”
• “The Conservative Women take radio by storm” – The Conservative Women highlights radio appearances of three of its writers from the last week; Sonia Elijah on the Innova lateral flow test, Jane Kelly on the need to kick the Zoom habit and Nicola Lund on the Government-driven vaccine cult
• “Do not require health and social care workers to take COVID-19 vaccination” – A petition on parliament.uk against making the jab compulsory for those working in health and social care
• “No Surprises” – Revs Tom, Jamie and Daniel discuss the entirely unsurprising extension of the lockdown beyond June 21st in the latest Irreverend
• “Where do we go from here?” – Dan Astin Gregory takes stock of recent developments in the latest episode of the Pandemic Podcast
• “The failure of PCR mass testing” – “PCR mass testing achieved essentially nothing but hundreds of billions in unnecessary costs and large-scale psychological trauma, especially in children,” says the Swiss Doctor, reporting on a new German study that re-analysed 160,000 test results
• “45 students test positive, new cases at the highest in a month” – Health authorities are investigating a Covid outbreak in Israel, the Jerusalem Post reports, after 45 children tested positive in Binyamina. Nine of them are reported to be experiencing mild symptoms
• “Alberta hits 70% vaccination threshold, triggering full reopening on July 1st” – The Post Millennial reports that the province of Alberta will remove all mandatory restrictions on June 17th after the benchmark of 70% of eligible Albertans being vaccinated was passed
• “Feeling used after getting AstraZeneca shot to help beat back third wave” – “It’s hard not to feel used right now,” says Brynn Lackie in the Toronto Sun. He happily volunteered to get the AstraZeneca jab as soon as it was offered, but now NACI, Canada’s vaccine board, say the mRNA vaccines are preferred
• “‘Protected them to death’: Elder-care COVID rules under fire” – Families across the U.S. are increasingly frustrated as care home residents continue to be subjected to pandemic restrictions, according to the Associated Press
• “National Football League player Cole Beasley vows not to take COVID-19 jab or follow league’s draconian rules” – Cole Beasley has declared that he won’t take a Covid jab, RT reports, or abide by new NFL restrictions on unvaccinated players, and that he would sooner retire than betray his beliefs
• “Federal judge throws out CDC’s cruise safety regulations, handing win to DeSantis” – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has won his case against the CDC over the safety rules they put in place for cruise lines, the Miami Herald reports
• “Californians cry foul on reports of state’s economic boom” – As California came out of lockdown, reports heralded an economic boom, but the Washington Express says residents are sceptical that they will see the benefit
• “U.S. Should be ‘focus’ of Coronavirus Origin Probe” – Epidemiologist Zeng Guang says the hunt for the origins of SARS-CoV-2 must now turn to the U.S, and the army laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland, Breitbart reports
• “What fresh hell have we brought upon ourselves?” – “Coronavirus won’t end the moral superiority of the cloistered class,” writes Cockburn in Spectator World, pointing to an especially ghastly item from the Late Late Show with James Cordon
• “The Routes Of Viral Traffic” – Writing for Noema, Andrew Lakoff considers whether the prophecy that future pandemics are inevitable actually brought one into being
• “Mexico City shuts down classes again, enters higher COVID-19 risk tier” – Mexico City schools that had just gone back to in-person classes will be closed again starting Monday as the number of Covid cases continues to grow, Reuters reports
• “Tokyo cancels public viewing sites, some to be vaccination centres” – Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has announced the closure of all public viewing sites for the summer Olympics, Reuters reports. Some venues are to become COVID-19 vaccinations centres instead
• “Fauci, Gain-of-Function Research, and Wuhan Lab Funding” – A clip from the Joe Rogan Show, considering the evidence for and implications of the lab-leak hypothesis, with Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball
• “Don’t Censor Science” – Kolkata Commons talks with Professor Sunetra Gupta about Covid, lockdowns and more
• “‎Julius Ruechel Flips Covid Upside Down on Apple Podcasts” – ‎Appearing on Trish Wood is Critical, Investigative Writer Julius Ruechel makes a strong case that the most deadly outbreaks were in institutions and that lockdowns were for nothing
• “My fellow Scot and friend Neil Oliver is absolutely bang-on here” – The GB news presenter Neil Oliver hits out at lockdown hypocrisy