News Round-Up

• “Warnings of six-hour airport queues and chaos lasting for weeks” – The Transport Secretary has confirmed that after July 19th double-jabbed people won’t have to quarantine when they come back from amber-list countries, the Daily Mail reports. Expect chaos in airports
• “Covid U.K.: Tens of thousands to be spared self-isolation” – Ministers have ordered an urgent review of the NHS app, according to the Daily Mail, with a view to cutting the numbers being asked to isolate unnecessarily
• “Lifting Covid rules in England ‘will overwhelm testing capacity’” – Professor Jon Deeks has warned that at least 660,000 gold-standard PCR tests are likely to be needed each day if daily infections climb to as high as 100,000 during the Summer, according to the Guardian
• “Delta variant is reinfecting people who have already had COVID-19” – A study published in Nature has found that people who have previously caught Covid are now more likely to be re-infected because of the Delta variant, the Telegraph reports, and a single dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca provides just 10% protection against the mutation
• “Rishi Sunak tells workers to get back to the office” – The Chancellor of the Exchequer is urging Brits to head back into the office as soon as the work from home guidance is lifted, the Telegraph says, arguing that it is “really important” for younger staff
• “Sajid Javid mocks Matt Hancock’s affair with Gina Coladangelo” – Sajid Javid teased his predecessor during a video meeting yesterday, MailOnline reports, saying, as the meeting began, “I hope my camera is on… I mean the one on my laptop, not the one on the ceiling”
• “Mick Jagger broke lockdown rules to watch England game” – Mick Jagger flew in from France on Tuesday to watch England play Denmark, MailOnline reports, when he should have been quarantining for 10 days
• “Italy fans to be allowed into Euro 2020 final at Wembley without self-isolating” – Government Ministers and UEFA have agreed on exemption to allow Italian fan to come to Wembley, the Telegraph reports, despite England fans being barred from entering Rome for the quarter final
• “Financial hit from Covid far less drastic than feared” – The Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that unemployment, debt and earnings have not worsened significantly during the pandemic, the Times reports
• “Finla owners ‘could face prison’ if they don’t pay £42,000” – The Plymouth Herald tells the story of Finla Coffee, a café in Plymptom, whose owners face a £42,000 fine for continuing to trade during the November lockdown
• “Covid and schools: the evidence for reopening safely” – Cassandra Willyard details the studies which suggest that rates of Covid transmission are lower in Schools than in the community for Nature. “It’s safer for them to be in school than to be outside of school,” says Paediatrician Daniel Benjamin, one of the quoted experts
• “Embracing pandemic uncertainty in science, society and policy – A study by Dr. Colin Foad in Royal Society Open Science exploring why the lockdown policy enjoyed so much public support. We find “that people supported lockdown, in essence, because it exists”
• “Universities to defy Government advice and keep online learning” – Nearly all Russell Group Universities have said that they would adopt “blended learning” in the coming academic year, the Times reports, despite the Education Secretary saying they can go back to in-person teaching. Needless to say, undergraduates will still pay £9,250 a year in fees
• “Watching Euros may be behind rise in infections in men” – Men were 30% more likely than women to test positive for the virus in the past two weeks, according to the React study. The BBC suggests it might be because so many men have been getting together to watch the football
• “Experts shouldn’t be shielded from public debate” – “We all have a right to challenge the scientists who are now wielding so much power,” says Norman Lewis in Spiked
• “Why doctors have chosen to delete Test and Trace app” – “When I downloaded the NHS Test and Trace app I thought I was doing something sensible, diligent and public-spirited,” says Dr Max Pemberton in the Daily Mail. But then he began to realise that “it wasn’t so simple”
• “Elderly people imprisoned in care homes never had a chance to rage against the dying of the light” – The average care home resident “has a life expectancy of just two-and-a-half years”, writes Dr. Tessa Dunlop in Mail+. “But in our new normal, it mattered not if they died alone, scared and confused, so long as their death did not push Britain further up the premier league of Covid failed states”
• “‘Due to Covid’ – the frustrating new catchphrase that has replaced customer service” – “Like ‘leaves on the line’ and ‘the computer says no’, ‘due to Covid’ is the bleak phrase that throws a cordon sanitaire around everything from lackadaisical customer service to zealous jobsworths,” says Judith Woods in the Telegraph
• “Freedom Day… or a temporary reprieve?” – “We may allow ourselves… a brief period of rejoicing”, say the Health Advisory & Recovery Team of ‘Freedom day’, but they point out that “many stark abnormalities will remain from July 19th onwards”. Part of HART’s latest newsletter
• “Why we should stop testing in schools” – “We could stop screening children for Covid altogether,” say Dominic Wilkinson, Jonathan Pugh and Julian Savulescu in the Conversation, and keep them out of school if they are unwell. “This is the way we normally approach viral illness in children”
• “Zero Covid?” – In his latest post for Lockdown Satire, Andy Lambeth imagines the COBRA crisis meeting that would occur were COVID-19 suddenly to disappear
• “Needled at lunch by my vaccine-zealot friends” – Kate Dunlop was looking forward to meeting up with some old friends, but their thoughts on lockdowns, vaccines and Covid passports took her by surprise. “I got the sense that I had become somehow alien,” she says in the Conservative Woman
• “Scandal of the rushed rollout: Censored vaccine expert speaks out” – Sonia Elijah writes up the highlights of her discussion with Dr Robert Malone, who invented the mRNA vaccine technology, in the Conservative Woman
• “Call for new restrictions as Spain’s youth bear brunt of Covid cases” – Euronews reports that Spain has seen a resurgence of Covid cases among the young and unvaccinated. Over the last 14 days, there have been 800 cases per 100,000 people among the 20-29 age group
• “Israel registers two deaths for the first time in weeks” – Two people died of coronavirus in Israel early Thursday, the Jerusalem Post reports. The last time that two people succumbed to the virus within 24 hours was May 27th
• “Fauci tells those hesitant to get vaccinated to ‘get over it’” – The Post Millennial highlights Dr. Fauci’s latest media appearance where he had a message for the as yet unvaccinated. “What is the problem? Get over it. Get over this political statement. Just get over it, and try and save the lives of yourself and your family,” he said
• “Virus Experts to CNN: Trust Us, Everything We Do In Our Profession Is Always Safe” – Writing for the National Review, Jim Geraghty takes aim at the virus researchers who scoffed at the lab-leak theory on CNN
• “New Documents Show Wuhan Lab Asked NIH Official for Information on Disinfectants” – Judicial Watch has obtained some more emails and documents from the National Institutes of Health about the Wuhan lab. Includes an email from the Vice Director of the Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and indoor surfaces
• “Pfizer to ask FDA to authorise booster dose of COVID vaccine as Delta variant spreads” – Pfizer intends to seek U.S. authorisation for its booster jab within the next month, according to Reuters
• “South Korea to raise COVID-19 curbs to highest level in Seoul, says PM” – Reuters reports that COVID-19 curbs have been raised to their highest level in Seoul and some neighbouring regions, meaning the closure of schools, nightclubs and bars, and restricting public meetings to two people after 6.00p.m.
• “Spectators banned from most Olympic events as Covid emergency declared” – Tokyo has declared a fourth state of emergency alert, the Guardian says, meaning that for the first time in history spectators have been barred from most Olympic events
• “New South Wales health officials have made subtle changes to public health order” – The Chief Health Officer in New South Wales Dr Kerry Chant has amended public health orders to make it illegal for more than one person to visit another household to give “care or assistance”, the Daily Mail reports
• “Why should we rely on mRNA vaccines?” – Last month the Australian Government announced that it would phase out the AstraZeneca vaccine and rely on the Pfizer and Moderna jabs instead. “However,” says Dr. Rocco Loiacono in Spectator Australia, “these mRNA inoculations are not without their problems, either”
• “Dr. Robert Malone on the Bioethics of Experimental Vaccines and the ‘Ultimate Gaslighting’” – Epoch TV sits down with Dr. Robert Malone to discuss Covid vaccine safety, the repurposing of drugs and the ethics of public health
• “This sense that children are so resilient that they can adapt to anything is just wrong” – In the Telegraph‘s latest Planet Normal podcast, UsForThem’s Liz Cole says that praising children’s resilience is just a way “for adults to justify the fact that they haven’t protected children when they should have done”