News Round-Up

• “Boris Johnson puts faith in the public’s common sense on July 19th” – The Mail On Sunday expects the Prime Minister to confirm on Monday that the easing of restrictions will proceed as planned, despite the nattering nabobs of negativism
• “Hospital waiting lists could top 13 million in months, warns Sajid Javid” – Health Secretary Sajid Javid has told the Telegraph that a “very British” attitude of not wanting to overburden NHS has meant millions of illnesses are going untreated
• “Third Covid wave could stretch into autumn” – Professor Adam Kucharski of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine expects this wave of infections is “unlikely to be a brief, sharp peak, but rather a longer plateau over the summer into autumn”, according to the Telegraph
• “UEFA bigwigs granted permission to enter UK” – The UEFA VIPs who were granted special permission to enter the U.K. without having to quarantine have enjoyed a dinner at Old Billingsgate Market in the City of London, the Mail On Sunday reports, despite Cabinet Ministers saying they would only be allowed to leave their hotels for the final
• “Anti-vax beauty therapist ‘will refuse clients who have had Covid jab’” – Beauty therapist Sarah McCutcheon wrote in a post on her Glasgow business’ Instagram page that her business would not “treat anyone who has had a COVID jab”. The National Health and Beauty Federation is concerned that this goes against Government guidance, MailOnline reports
• “Pressuring young people to get vaccinated is ‘ludicrous’, warn MPs” – Conservative MPs are pushing back against advertisers suggesting society will be closed to the unvaccinated, the Telegraph reports
• “Stop Thermal Surveillance” – Big Brother Watch warns against the use of thermal screening technology as a Covid safety measure
• “Covid Compensation Confirmed!” – On Class Action Covid U.K., Mina tells of the refund she managed to get from her daughter’s nursery after it closed for 10 days following an asymptomatic pupil testing positive
• “We must end lockdown and stop pandering to public health junta and eternally fearful” – “A worrying number of people have been thoroughly conditioned by the concerted Government Covid fear and emotional blackmail campaign,” writes Joanna Blythman in the Herald. “I do feel sorry for them, but we cannot let them shut down life for the rest of us”
• “Think this is freedom? You’ve forgotten what life was once like” – “You may feel liberated if you like,” says Peter Hitchens in his Mail On Sunday column. “I can feel the forces of anti-liberation massing for another self-righteous regime of regulation and interference”
• “Our public service broadcaster is becoming more insular by the day” – “The BBC is freezing out newspaper journalists who question the wisdom of prolonging restrictions,” writes Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph
• A significant minority of British people revel in authoritarianism for its own sake” – “We are in a culture war that has become decoupled from the science,” says Dan Hannan in the Sunday Telegraph, lamenting the recent polls showing that huge numbers are in favour of mask mandates, quarantining travellers and permanently closing night clubs
• “Will the Nudge Unit be pulling your strings after Freedom Day?” – “Freedom Day will in fact be anything but,” writes Laura Dodsworth in the Telegraph. “There are already warning signs about how we might be manipulated in the weeks and months to come”
• “Covid and the death of independent thought” –  “The truly depressing thing about the last 17 months is how people have acted,” says Elephant City in the Conservative Woman. “In particular, my family and friends”
• “Ivermectin: The Sir Humphrey Tapes” – Stuart Wavell imagines how Yes Minister would have dramatised the suppression of ivermectin for the Conservative Woman
• “Imagine” – “Imagine how you would feel if one day, with no warning, you lost your friends, your exams, your clubs, your world… and there was no clear date for you to get them back,” says teenager April, describing her experience of the last 16 months on Quaranteens
• “Why has the church not engaged theologically with lockdown?” – The Rev. Phill Sacre asks why so many churches have failed to engage theologically with lockdowns and other elements of the national response to Covid
• “The time to defend freedom is when you can still afford it” – “If freedom to get on a bus, or go out to earn a living, comes with a condition of submitting to a medical procedure, then by definition it is not freedom,” says GB News’s Neil Oliver
• “An End in Sight?” – Bournbrook contributors S.D. Wickett and Luke Perry discuss the forthcoming easing of restrictions, as well as the legacy of the Covid era in the latest episode of Week in Review
• “France’s top health advisory body wants compulsory vaccinations for health workers” – France 24 reports that Haute Autorité de Santé, the country’s top health advisory body, recommends making vaccines mandatory for all health workers without delay
• “Europe rushes to tighten Covid rules, spooked by Delta variant spread” – Southern European countries are rushing to reimpose Covid restrictions, the Telegraph reports, as the numbers of Delta variant cases continue to rise
• “Spanish bubble concert raises a smile after COVID-19 curbs” – Some 40 people wore headphones and climbed inside 20 plastic bubbles for a concert in Esplugues de Llobregat, Reuters reports
• “Israel’s teen Covid vaccination campaign closes Saturday with 40% jabbed” – Israel’s drive to vaccinate its youth is coming to an end for the moment, the Jerusalem Post reports, as the country’s supply expires at the end of the month and no new deliveries are expected until September
• “Suicide-related hospital visits are up 51% among teenage girls in the U.S.” – Figures from the CDC reveal that Emergency Room visits related to suicide attempts are spiking across the U.S., the Post Millennial reports, particularly among 12-17 year-old girls
• “Can I talk to you about our Lord and Pfizer?” – “The Biden administration’s new plan to boost vaccination numbers by sending ‘surge teams’ into COVID-19 ‘hotspots’ has the potential to go down in history as the worst public health mistake in U.S. history,” writes Helen Buyniski in RT
• “Sophistry at Duke in Defence of Masks” – North Carolina’s schools all showed low levels of transmission, something Duke University researchers claim is due to mask mandates. But the study had no control group, Tom Nicholson says in the Wall Street Journal, so they “might as well have attributed the low Covid rate in schools to wearing shoes”
• “No relief in sight as Sydney lockdown enters week three” – New South Wales is bracing for a lengthy lockdown, 9News reports
• “Australia is proof Zero Covid is catastrophic fantasy” – “A bunch of globetrotting wanderers bred on the ‘Anzac spirit’ of courage, good humour, mateship and derring-do is now a nation of Nervous Nellies,” says Angela Mollard in the Mail On Sunday
• “Find $75 billion to head off next pandemic, top panel tells G20” – COVID-19 is probably only a forerunner of increasingly dangerous pandemics in the future, an expert panel has told the G20 finance ministers meeting in Venice and, Reuters reports, they recommend that governments find an extra $75 billion over the next five years to prepare
• “For children, it’s not necessary and too risky” – For children, the vaccine is “all risk and no benefit” says British consultant virologist Chris Smith on GB News