News Round-Up

• “Four steps to Covid freedom” – Boris is to let fully vaccinated Brits go to amber-list countries without quarantine on return from July 19th, the Mail on Sunday reports
• “Sajid Javid: World leaders have acted like panicked shoppers hoarding lavatory paper” – The new Health Secretary made the remark in a research paper produced in his role as a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in December 2020, according to the Telegraph
• “School bubbles are paralysing society, warns vaccines adviser” – JCVI member Professor Adam Finn has warned ministers that they must either “accept paralysis or relax the rules” on school bubbles, the Telegraph reports
• “Doctors want to keep some measures after July 19th” – The British Medical Association is calling for the continued use of face masks and new ventilation standards, the BBC reports, as they are crucial to protect the NHS, health and education
• “The 3-step, COVID-propaganda detox plan” – A plan to help people “break free from their emotional shackles and return to normality”, courtesy of Dr. Gary Sidley on Coronababble
• “The Government has exploited our humanity to create an inhuman system” – “Until now, the Government has been able to exploit the people’s humanity – their conscientiousness and responsibility – to maintain an inhuman system,” writes Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph. “But that moment has passed”
• “What Covid could look like in the next seven years” – In a feature for the Telegraph, Luke Mintz considers the future trajectory of COVID-19 as it becomes endemic
• “Business as Usual: Batley and Spen, Javid and the High Street” – Bournbrook contributors S.D. Wickett, Luke Perry and guest Peter Tutykhin discuss the impact of the new Health Secretary, the Batley and Spen by-election and the state of the British High Street in the latest episode of the Week In Review
• “Government should leave our kids alone” – Vaccinating children is a “fork in the road” says Neil Oliver in a GB News editorial. ” We will be judged, we should be judged, as human beings, by what we do next”
• “Europe scrambles to vaccinate citizens as Delta variant cases surge” – As restrictions are lifted across Europe, Euronews reports that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is urging caution in respect of the Delta variant and calling on countries to get on with their vaccination rollouts
• “Delta variant threatens to ruin summer, says France’s health minister” – France’s Health Minister Oliver Véran has said that “there is a potential threat of an epidemic resumption as early as this summer”, the Connexion reports
• “Italy breaks up fake EU Covid pass schemes” – Italian police said on Saturday they had broken up a number of online schemes selling fake European Union digital COVID-19 status certificates or purported coronavirus vaccines, Reuters reports
• “Florence Bans evening walks in city centre to prevent overcrowding” – The popular Italian city will allow tourists to eat or drink but they will not be permitted to wander around the city streets after 9pm, MailOnline reports
• “Ukraine investigates cause of man’s death after COVID shot” – Ukraine’s health ministry is investigating why a 47 year-old man died four hours after he received a shot of the Pfizer vaccine, Reuters reports
• “Israel could see 1,000 new daily Covid cases in two weeks” – According to researchers at the Hebrew University, Israel is expected to see as many as 1,000 new cases a day within two weeks, Jerusalem Post reports, but they note that it is unclear what percentage of people will develop serious illness
• “Alberta pastor released from jail after being arrested for defying health orders a second time” – Alberta Pastor Timothy Stephens of Fairview Baptist Church, who was jailed for defying public health orders, has been released from the Calgary Remand Centre, the Post Millennial reports
• “Dr. Fauci teams up with TikTok influencers to encourage vaccination” – Dr. Anthony Fauci has taken to TikTok in a bid to encourage young people to get vaccinated, according to the Daily Mail, amid concerns about low take-up rates
• “Ohio Judge Adds COVID-19 Vaccination Condition of Probation” – The New American reports that a judge in Franklin County, Ohio has included vaccination against COVID-19 as a condition of three defendants’ terms of probation
• “LinkedIn Deletes Account of mRNA Vaccine Pioneer Who Questioned Risks of COVID-19 Shots” – Dr. Robert Malone’s LinkedIn account was deleted after he questioned whether the jabs are appropriate to give to children, according to the Epoch Times
• “District of Columbia Attorney General subpoenas Facebook for data on all users that have spread ‘COVID-19 misinformation’” – The District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has filed a subpoena against Facebook demanding that it identify the groups, pages and accounts that have violated the COVID-19 misinformation rules, according to Reclaim the Net
• “If Private Platforms Use Government Guidelines to Police Content, is that State Censorship?” – “YouTube’s decision to demonetise podcaster Bret Weinstein raises serious questions,” says Matt Taibbi. “Both about the First Amendment and regulatory capture”
• “The COVID-19 Ratchet Effects Are Becoming Clearer and More Concerning” – “Creating the best post-Covid world possible involves more than eradicating the virus,” says Raymond J. March at AIER. “It also requires returning to pre-Covid levels of government involvement in our lives”
• “Experts Said Ending Lockdowns Would Be Worse for the Economy than the Lockdowns Themselves. They Were Wrong” – “The complete lack of any correlation between economic success and covid lockdowns illustrates yet again that the confident predictions of the experts… were very wrong,” writes Ryan McMaken at MisesWire
• “Maybe We’re Too Ready for the Next Pandemic” – “Is it possible to be too prepared such that the whole system comes to be deployed when it is not really needed?” asks Jeffrey Tucker in Real Clear Markets. “Absolutely,” he says
• “Indians not allowed. How come? Global travel bans on Indians are illogical, and may be reflective of prejudice” – Writing for the Times of India, Chetan Bhagat hits out at the U.K. and other countries for their bans on travellers from India. “We, as per official numbers, have less than 1/10th the cases of the U.K. on a population-adjusted basis. And yet, it is the UK. that has banned Indian travellers – tested, vaccinated, quarantined or otherwise”
• “Indonesia expects COVID-19 cases to rise despite stricter curbs” – According to Reuters, authorities in Indonesia expect Covid cases to continue to rise before the new restrictions have any impact
• “‘A lot more dead people’: COVID too dangerous to be treated like flu” – Australian epidemiologists have disputed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s contention that it will be possible to treat Covid “like the Flu”, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, saying that masks may be needed for years in order to avoid excess deaths
• “When Politicians Panicked” – Financial journalist John Tamny is the guest on the latest Human Action Podcast by the Mises Institute, talking to Jeff Deist about his book, When Politicians Panicked, an account of the disastrous political mismanagement of COVID-19
• “‘No correlation’ between lockdowns and preventing COVID-19 deaths” – “There are several studies on the low efficacy of lockdowns in preventing Covid-related deaths,” the Institute of Public Affairs’s Gideon Rozner explains to Sky News Australia. “But even common sense makes it clear there is no correlation between lockdowns and Covid deaths”
• “There are millions of people whose lives have been wrecked by lockdown” – Francis Foster explains why lockdowns are popular, even as they have been an “unmitigated disaster” for so many