News Round-Up

• “Travel policy in chaos as cheap Covid tests exposed as bogus” – Grant Shapps claimed that Covid tests could be purchased for under £2.50 from approved suppliers, but hours later the advertised prices increased almost 60-fold, the Telegraph reports
• “Do as England does and end amber list quarantine, Nicola Sturgeon told” – Scotland’s First Minister is under pressure to follow England’s lead, the Telegraph reports, and end the 10-day quarantine period for vaccinated travellers
• “Scotland’s Covid case surge drops off team’s exit from Euro 2020” – According to Professor Paul Hunter, Scotland’s Covid cases are falling thanks to the national team’s exit from Euro 2020. England may see a similar trend after Sunday’s final, according to MailOnline
• “Up to 40% of ‘Covid hospital patients’ infected with Delta variant may have been admitted for a different illness, official figures suggest” – A total of 1,904 people in England had spent at least one night in hospital with the mutant virus by June 21st, says MailOnline, but 39% of them may have been admitted to hospital for another condition and tested positive through routine NHS testing
• “U.K. councils suffer £3 billion budget deficit due to Covid” – Residents of various councils face tax rises and slashed services as officials fight to avoid bankruptcy, MailOnline reports
• “One cup of coffee a day cuts risk of falling ill with Covid by a tenth” – U.S. scientists, who analysed the records of 40,000 British adults, think coffee protects against Covid as it contains health-boosting plant chemicals that may give a huge boost to the immune system, the Daily Mail reports
• “July 19th might not be end of the line for face masks on trains, admits Grant Shapps” – Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has confirmed that rail operators will be able to make it a condition of travelling that face coverings are worn. According to the Telegraph, Shapps suggested it could be an appropriate measure at rush hour
• “English workplaces to be free to abandon masks and distancing” – Ministers are preparing to tell companies they can drop face masks, social distancing, and other Covid safety measures, the Financial Times reports
• “Vaccinated Britons rush to book quarantine-free holidays in amber-list countries” – There has been a five-fold rise in bookings for travel to amber-list countries, the Times reports, following the news that after July 19th double-jabbed Brits will no longer have to quarantine on their return
• “Welcome to the Children’s Union” – The website of a new group set up to defend the interests of children
• “Nicola Sturgeon must fix the self-isolation shambles if she wants to solve the NHS crisis” – “The First Minister needs to get a grip of the now obviously deficient contact tracing system,” says Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph. “Even if this means swallowing her pride and following changes south of the border”
• “Boris Johnson must hold his nerve over lifting restrictions” – “If this week’s developments are a guide to future Government policy on Covid, in which a sense of personal responsibility prevails over illiberal measures,” says this Spectator editorial, then Boris Johnson “could yet prove to be the man for the moment”
• “Lord Ridley demands Wuhan probe” – The Spectator’s Mr Steerpike highlights a recent intervention by Matt Ridley in the House of Lords in which he called for a “full and independent investigation” into the origins of SARS-CoV-2
• “The COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis: did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?” – Paul D. Thacker explains for the BMJ why it took nearly a year for mainstream authorities to recognise the lab leak theory as a viable hypothesis
• “Pro-lockdown polling is not as clear as you might think” – “Polling data is not all that it seems,” says UnHerd’s Amy Jones as she calls for scepticism in the face of any poll “claiming that nearly one-fifth of the population supports a permanent curfew”
• “The lockdown addicts” – Fraser Myers analyses the recent Ipsos MORI poll showing strong support for continuing restrictions in Spiked. “There are social and political trends that have made the Government’s job of imposing compulsory house arrest much easier than it might have been, say, 10, 20 or 30 years ago,” he says
• “The vaccine push has left the public completely unprotected” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Dr. Mark Shaw looks at how British medical practice has fallen short “at the level of caution  and aftercare” in the rollout of the vaccinations
• “How they groomed us for the Lockdown State” – Paul Collits identifies “seven developments which have enabled the policy disasters of lockdown and vaccine apartheid” for the Conservative Woman
• “Legal challenge over Ministers’ private emails” – The Conservative Woman’s Kathy Gyngell reports on the Good Law Project’s legal challenge over Ministers’ use of private emails and WhatsApp accounts to conduct Government business
• “‘Nobody has died’: scandalous vaccine propaganda for NHS staff” – A broadside from Niall McCrae in the Unity News Network against the NHS training webinar entitled “Vaccination Myth Busting Session for Care Staff”, a particularly egregious piece of vaccine propaganda
• “20 Things I’ve Learned (Or Had Confirmed) About Humanity During The Pandemic” – “Most people would rather be in the majority, than be right,” is number one in Zuby’s clear-sighted list of pandemic take-ways. A twitter thread worth reading in full
• “Fear, loathing and Freedom Day” – In their first video podcast, Spiked contributors Tom Slater, Ella Whelan and Fraser Myers analyse the continued enthusiasm for lockdowns among the “neurotic middle classes”
• “Travellers entering Israel to isolate up to 24 hours as of July 16th” – Travellers entering Israel will, as of July 16th, be obliged to quarantine for 24 hours, according to the Jerusalem Post, no matter what country they are coming from
• “Israel to weigh opening of COVID-19 vaccine production plant” – The Israeli Government is setting up an enquiry to consider whether it might be worthwhile for the country to establish its own coronavirus vaccine plant, the Jerusalem Post reports
• “In Children, Risk of COVID-19 Death or Serious Illness Remains Extremely Low, New Studies Find” – The Wall Street Journal covers the recently published U.K. studies which found that children are at extremely low risk of dying from Covid and that the threat “might be even lower than previously thought”
• “Knocking On Doors, Biden Administration Has Its Own ‘Track and Trace” – “The Biden administration’s announcement that it would go door-to-door pushing vaccines is alarming, to say the least,” says Jeffrey Tucker in Real Clear Markets
• “Joe Rogan & Dr. Joseph Varon Ignite Ivermectin Awareness” – David DeGraw celebrates two recent items highlighting the evidence for ivermectin as an effective treatment for COVID-19: Joe Rogan’s podcast with Bret Weinstein and Dr Pierre Kory, and Ivory Hecker’s report from United Memorial Medical Centre in Houston with Dr. Joseph Varon
• “Who’s up for color-coded lanyards for the workplace indicating your level of social anxiety being around other human beings?” – Not the Bee is amused to see colour coded lanyards being handed out at an office in the U.K. for returning employees to indicate their preferred Social Distancing levels
• “Pandemic sows seeds of future inequality as pupils quit school” – Half-a-million children in South Africa have dropped out of school, Business Day reports, and younger pupils lost close to a full year of learning due to COVID-19 and the closure of schools since March 2020
• “‘Do not leave your home’: Sydney bracing for weeks of lockdown” – Sydney is preparing to endure a protracted lockdown, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, as the number of people in strict isolation doubles to 14,000 in a day
• “New Zealand not willing to risk UK-style ‘live with Covid’ policy, says Jacinda Ardern” – Zero Covid fanatic Jacinda Arden says there’s no way New Zealand is going to ease coronavirus restrictions in the way that the U.K. is proposing to do
• “Warren Mundine is sick of bureaucrats ‘fearmongering’ and ‘telling us how to live’” – Advance Australia salutes the prominent aboriginal leader for his attack on the lockdowns and the bureaucrats who would tell Australians how to live in an article for Australia’s Daily Telegraph
• “Despotism Down Under ” – “The next time you hear that Australia has had an exemplary Covid response, try not to bust a gut laughing,” says Professor James Allen, as he writes about the Zero Covid madness in his adopted country for Law and Liberty
• “Proof that puts an end to the Sars-CoV-2 Narrative” – A talk by Professor Sucharit Bhakdi for Oracle films ⁣explaining why the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its descendants “are not so different from the old, normal coronaviruses that they would not be recognised by the immune system”
• “The Persecution of Canadian Physicians by Organised Medicine During the COVID-19 Pandemic” – A group interview hosted on the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom website with four Canadian physicians – Dr. Chris Milburn, Dr. Charles Hoffe, Dr. Francis Christian and Dr. Roger Hodkinson – who’ve been bullied by regulatory bodies and professional associations for questioning their Government’s response to the pandemic
• “We are more afraid of this virus than any other nation” – “To get our lives back we have to stop this psychological torture,” says Luke Johnson to talkRADIO’s Mark Dolan