News Round-Up

• “Easing measures on July 19th very likely, says Boris Johnson” – Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told the BBC that people in England are “very likely” to be able to return to “pretty much life before Covid” on July 19th, the BBC reports. So not by July 5th then
• “End the ‘madness’ of isolating children, Government warned” – The Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza is calling for an end to bubbles and self isolation from schools, the Telegraph says, as the paper announces a campaign to put young people first in the future response to Covid
• “Young people using social media to bypass vaccination rules” – Vaccine walk-in centres are defying official guidance by handing out second doses after just 21 days, the Telegraph reports, and young people are finding them through social media
• “Vaccines drive third-wave Covid death rate below 1 in 1,000” – Cambridge Statisticians have calculated that fewer than one in a thousand COVID-19 infections are now resulting in death, the Times reports, indicating an infection fatality rate of just 0.085%
• “‘Remorseless’ build-up of Covid hospital patients simply hasn’t happened” – “We know the remorseless logic of exponential growth,” the Prime Minister said when he delayed the end of lockdown, but according to the Telegraph, the build up of Covid patients has failed to materialise
• “BBC’s Andrew Marr says he caught COVID-19 after vaccine” – BBC journalist Andrew Marr told viewers of his Sunday morning programme that he caught a “nasty” bout of COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated, according to RT
• “Trial of first coronavirus variant vaccine under way” – The trials of a new AstraZeneca vaccine, tweaked to handle the South African/Beta variant, have begun, the New Scientist reports
• “Booster Covid jabs are not needed this winter, leading scientist says” – There is no need to give Brits booster Covid vaccines this year, Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, the lead research behind the AstraZeneca trials, has suggested, because the current jabs work so well. According to MailOnline, he sees nothing in the data to show a third jab would improve on the 90% protection offered by the first two jabs
• “Mother, 47, dies after AstraZeneca Covid jab caused blood clots” – Lucy Taberer, a mother of three from Aylestone, Leicester, fell seriously ill after getting the AstraZeneca jab, MailOnline reports, and developed blood clots on her brain which caused a massive stroke
• “Watch the shocking moment hundreds of students partied in Leeds Covid hotspot” – The Yorkshire Post reports with horror that young people, mainly students, gathered together for an end-of-academic-year party in Leeds
• “How are small businesses preparing for Freedom Day?” – Reporting for Startups, Helena Young finds out how small business are preparing for ‘Freedom Day’ on July 19th and the uncertainties that lie beyond
• “We won’t force all football fans at Wembley to self-isolate, so why do it in schools?” – “Muddled thinking has allowed the voices of doom to dominate, which in turn is damaging children’s education and their future prospects,” writes David Blunkett in the Telegraph
• “It is time to finally put children first in the age of Covid” – “For the first time in modern history, society has put the old before the young in an emergency,” says Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph. “It is time to finally put the young first”
• “Continued mask wearing won’t help us return to normal” – “Persisting with a face covering will prolong, rather than lessen, people’s anxieties,” writes Dr. Gary Sidley in the Critic
• “Barred – a GP with the courage to say No to vaccines” – Dr Sam White was suspended by NHS England for questioning coronavirus protocols, Sally Beck reports in the Conservative Woman
• “Hypocritical Gospel according to the Covidians” – The Covidians “have been giving us a daily masterclass in advanced hypocrisy”, says Elephant City in the Conservative Woman
• “Bill Gates’s stranglehold on the MSM: Part 1” – The Conservative Woman publishes the first of Karen Harradine’s investigative series into the links between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Britain’s mainstream media
• “Brilliant and Educational: What’s Up with the Great Reset?” – A film about the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, a “rebranded, tightened-up version of the UN’s decades-old ‘Sustainable Development’ agenda”, by Stacey Rudin on Ivor Cummins’s YouTube channel. Part 2 available here
• “March for freedom – London” – A mini-documentary from the Saturday’s anti-lockdown march in London, with personal stories from the people who took part
• “The Man With No Shame” – The latest episode of the Real Normal Podcast explores NHS bed allowances, Bourbon cremes and the indiscretions of you know who
• “Tourism-reliant Portugal to quarantine unvaccinated Britons” – Any unjabbed Brits travelling to Portugal will be obliged to quarantine for 14 days, Reuters reports
• “Coronavirus: Health minister to push for outdoor SafePass” – The Cyprus Mail reports that the country’s health minister, Constantinos Ioannou, is rumoured to be pushing for the use of the ‘safe pass’ to be extended to outdoor areas of bars, restaurants and cafes. Currently its use is limited to indoor settings
• “Despite rise in cases, Israel has seen just one Covid death in two weeks” – Israel is “doing well despite the return of some restrictions,” the Times of Israel says. “There has been just one COVID-19 death in Israel in the past two weeks, and serious cases are down to just 22 nationwide”
• “Russia on the back foot as third Covid wave surges” – According to the Financial Times, the Russian Government is introducing tough new restrictions and compulsory vaccinations in response to rising numbers of Delta variant cases
• “Hunter Biden’s investment firm funded company that partnered with Wuhan Virology Lab” – It has emerged that Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, an investment firm once headed up by Hunter Biden, was one of the main financial backers for Metabiota, a company that, according to the Post Millennial, partnered with both the EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology
• “No longer about health” – A clip from a public health briefing in Nova Scotia in which it’s explained that the purpose of a recent injunction banning public gatherings is to prevent the spread of “false information”
• “U.S.-U.K. travel corridor talks increasingly unlikely to conclude at end of July” – The rise of Delta variant cases in the U.K. and uncertainty about the status of the AstraZeneca jab in the U.S. mean that negotiations over a UK-U.S. covid travel corridor are likely to extend into August and possibly even September, Reuters reports
• “Biden Administration Warns COVID-19 Origins Review May Not Be Definitive” – President Biden “is mindful of the fact” that the 90-day review that he ordered into the origins of COVID-19 might not find a definitive answer within 90 days, the Wall Street Journal reports
• “America Would Look Like Canada if Florida Hadn’t Fought Against Lockdowns” – Breitbart spotlights Governor Ron DeSantis’s appearance on Fox over the weekend, where he touted Florida’s success in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic
• “Thousands Stranded As Bangladesh Shuts Public Transport Ahead Of Lockdown” – Thousands of people were stranded in Bangladesh’s capital on Monday, NDTV reports, as authorities halted almost all public transport ahead of a new lockdown
• “I tested positive for COVID-19 twice in two cities. The responses were vastly different” – “As someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 in both Britain and Hong Kong,” writes Pauline Lockwood for CNN, “I’ve experienced the worst of both worlds”
• “‘I Was Never Sick…’: Only Foreign Scientist In Wuhan Lab Speaks Out” – An interview in NDTV with Danielle Anderson, an expert in bat-borne viruses and the only foreign scientist to undertake research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Her most recent stint ended in November 2019. She believes SARS-CoV-2 most likely came from a natural source
• “Suspect No. 1: Why Fort Detrick lab should be investigated for global COVID-19 origins tracing” – The CCP-managed Global Times makes a case for investigating the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a Fort Detrick Lab in Maryland, pointing to a shut down of the lab in July 2019
• “Retired Gurkha soldiers succumb to Covid as Nepal’s plea for vaccines goes unanswered” – At least 63 retired Gurkha soldiers living in Nepal have succumbed to COVID-19, the Telegraph reports, as the U.K. is criticised for failing to answer Nepal’s request for more jabs
• “Perth and Peel to enter four-day ‘full lockdown’” – Perthnow reports on the latest lockdown in zero-Covid Australia
• “Like the mighty Murray, Covid public policy insanity never runs dry” – In Spectator Australia, Ramesh Thakur invites his readers to sip once again “from the bottomless well of public policy insanity to institute self-harming non-solutions to a non-crisis”
• “Conflict of Interest in WHO Recommendation Against Ivermectin” – Andrew Bannister points out where the World Health Organisation gets its funding from for TrialSiteNews
• “The British people haven’t risen up as one and said ‘enough’” – “We’ve beaten this thing,” Toby tells Kevin O’Sullivan on talkRADIO. “Why aren’t the British people saying, ‘We’ve had it!'”