News Round-Up

• “Matt Hancock’s affair footage was from his office CCTV” – Glen Owen at the Mail On Sunday looks into how the story broke. Apparently, it was a whistle-blower in the Department of Health who contacted opponents of the former Health Secretary’s stance on lockdowns
• “Thousands of anti-lockdown protesters descend on central London” – The Telegraph’s report on yesterday’s anti-lockdown march in London
• “Entire schools closed owing to Delta variant” – A number of schools in the North of England have closed completely in response to rising numbers of Delta cases, the Telegraph reports
• “Covid quarantine hotels: Women say they were sexually harassed by guards” – Four women who stayed at UK quarantine hotels have told the BBC that they were sexually harassed by guards working for G4S, according to the BBC
• “Almost 600m NHS home Covid tests unaccounted for, auditors reveal” – Almost 600 million of the 691 million lateral flow tests given to the public in England may not yet have been used, the Guardian reports
• “Health crisis is receding but economy is hurting. Show some guts PM and open up” – Ross Clark issues a clarion call to the Prime Minister in the Sun
• “Perhaps the Great British public aren’t terrified, quivering supplicants after all” – The British people’s acquiescence to lockdowns was a result not of fear, Janet Daley suggests in the Telegraph, but of their sense of social responsibility. And Matt Hancock “betrayed the sacred moral trust that the nation had accepted as its duty”
• “Matt Hancock’s behaviour was an insult to all of us who made sacrifices during lockdown: He had to go” – “This was not about him deciding to have an affair,” writes Stephen Pollard, a supporter of lockdowns, in the Telegraph. “It was, rather, about the purest form of political hypocrisy that exists – the idea that there is one rule for the oiks, and another for the privileged”
• “Famous journal accused of doing China’s dirty work ” – In the Mail on Sunday, Ian Birrell writes about how the Lancet denounced the lab leak theory as a conspiracy without evidence and praised the Chinese response to COVID-19
• “The Government’s travel quarantine plans don’t make sense” – Writing for UnHerd, George Peretz warns the Government that their current, nonsensical rules on travel are vulnerable to judicial review
• “Is Government ever justified in the weaponisation of fear?” – Sean Walsh sings the praises of Laura Dodsworth’s book, A State of Fear. It is, he says, “part history, part data scrutiny, and part moral warning”
• “Canadian surgeon fired for voicing safety concerns over Covid jabs for children” – Off-Guardian covers the story of Dr Francis Christian, the Clinical Professor of General Surgery at the University of Saskatchewan who was fired after he cautioned against giving children the Covid vaccine
• “Hey, Hancock, leave those kids alone” – Gillian Dymond at the Conservative Woman with a message for Matt Hancock who, as Health Secretary, looked favourably on plans to vaccinate children
• “Ivan Dennison, Covid Marshal, visits the Hall of Fame” – The Conservative Woman publishes the latest instalment of John Ellwood’s series on the life and times of Ivan Dennison, Covid Marshal Grade 2
• “The real crisis will begin when lockdown ends” – “History will show that it was lockdown – rather than Covid – which snapped the NHS’s, and Britain’s, spine,” writes Luke Perry in Bournbrook Magazine
• “The Sun newspaper caught me red-handed” – An entertaining parody of the Matt Hancock affair based on Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me
• “Borders, Boats and Buffoons” – The Bournbrook contributors – Michael Curzon, S.D. Wickett, and Luke Perry – take stock of the latest border restrictions and, of course, the Matt Hancock affair in the latest episode of the Week in Review
• “Freedom March in London” – Dan Astin Gregory reports live from yesterday’s march in London for his Pandemic Podcast. Further coverage is available on his YouTube channel here
• “Good attendance, great atmosphere” – Footage from yesterday’s Freedom March in Belfast
• “Has lockdown changed us forever?” – Aris Roussinos, Helen Thompson, Maurice Glasman and Mary Harrington joined Freddie Sayers on UnLocked TV to discuss how lockdown has changed society
• “Mallorca probes COVID-19 outbreak among hundreds of partying students” – Authorities in Mallorca are investigating a coronavirus outbreak involving more than 600 students celebrating the end of term, Reuters reports. At least 1,000 students are reportedly in isolation, and some are showing mild symptoms of COVID-19
• “Delta variant ‘spreading rapidly’ from Lisbon to rest of Portugal” – According to Portugal’s National Health Institute, the Delta variant represents 51% of cases in the country’s mainland, Reuters reports, showing the variant is “spreading rapidly” as it happened in Britain
• “Health Ministry mulling outdoor mask recommendation, restrictions on gatherings” – Faced with increasing numbers of Covid cases, Israeli health officials are considering re-imposing the requirement to wear masks outdoors, according to the Times of Israel, and requiring non-vaccinated people to provide a negative test result before entering certain venues
• “Russia reports highest COVID-19 death toll this year” – Yesterday Russia reported that 619 people died due to COVID-19 within the previous 24 hours, which is, says Euronews, the highest Russian toll since December
• “Re-Evaluating Mask Mandates Part II: Exposing the ‘Assumption-Led Claim’” – In the second part of C2C Journal’s re-evaluation of mask mandates, Masha Krylova takes a critical look at the evidence for their effectiveness and for their adverse effects, concluding that it is “time to unmask”
• “Canadian Forces have right to know if they got Covid at the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan” – Two members of Canada’s armed forces have told the Financial Post that they became ill when taking part in the Military World Games in Wuhan in October 2019
• “Weighing myocarditis cases, ACIP failed to balance the harms vs benefits of 2nd doses” – Professor Wesley Pegden explains the flaws in the presentation that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices was given when it was weighing up the potential harms and benefits associated with second doses of mRNA vaccines
• “Fauci and the Biden Admin are purposely deceiving us about the ‘Delta variant’ threat” – “There never was a legitimate reason for a single restriction on our liberties,” says Jordan Schachtel. “The ‘delta variant’ argument to curb our rights and transform our society is more baseless than ever before”
• “What We Know About the Origins of COVID-19” – A summary of the ongoing work to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2 from the Wall Street Journal
• “China rewrites the history of COVID-19” – The Los Angeles Times reports on how the Chinese Government is punishing those who sought to document what really happened in the early days of COVID-19
• “What’s Going On Under the Masks?” – Writing for AIER, Robert E. Wright considers the impact of dental care missed as a result of lockdowns
• “Sydney begins two-week lockdown as Delta variant surges through city” – Australia’s largest city, Sydney, has plunged into a two-week lockdown, the Times reports, in response to an increases in positive test results
• “When can conservatives disobey the law?” – “The time has come,” writes Dr. Rocco Loiacono in the Spectator Australia, “to let our parliamentarians know we as conservatives will no longer tolerate being taken for granted”
• “No more one rule for them, one rule for us” – Lawrence Fox enjoyed the march yesterday