News Round-Up

• “PM says restrictions will end on Monday but move will be reviewed” – The Daily Mail reports on yesterday’s press conference, focusing on Boris’s warning that the move will be reviewed in September and restrictions could return
• “Britain’s third Covid wave may have peaked, top scientist claims” – ZOE app data suggests that Britain’s third wave “may have peaked” already, Professor Tim Spector has said, according to MailOnline
• “The models that gave us Freedom Day: SAGE’s forecasts of third wave” – SAGE modelling suggests that it is realistic to expect between 100 to 200 daily fatalities across the UK at the worst of the current outbreak and 1,000 to 2,000 hospital admissions, MailOnline reports
• “Analysis: How rising hospitalisation rates have panicked the Prime Minister” – The data is all “pointing in the wrong direction” for Boris Johnson and the Government, says Paul Nuki in the Telegraph, explaining the cautious mood at the Downing Street press conference
• “Covid: ‘Not seeing my disabled son during lockdown was awful’” – Dawn Cavanagh tells the BBC about not being able to see her son Jack for 15 weeks
• “The impact of the coronavirus crisis on U.K. household wealth” – The Resolution Foundation has found that “the wealth gap between the richest 10% of families and the median family grew by £40,000 during the pandemic”, according to this press release
• “The Government will make domestic vaccine passports the law for large venues if they don’t introduce them voluntarily now” – Tom Newton Dunn has read the small print of the Step 4 Policy document released by the Government late last night – and it’s not pretty
• “Write to your MP to ask them to vote against mandatory vaccines” – Big Brother Watch warns that MPs are voting today on whether to make Covid vaccination mandatory for people working in adult care homes
• “Boris Johnson has lost his nerve and condemned us to Covid no-man’s land” – “Johnson has driven us into a ditch,” says Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph. “A febrile no man’s land of mask war mud-slinging, third wave hysteria and confusion over the distinction between guidelines and laws, from which there is no obvious escape”
• “Chaos looms as return to work meets self-isolation” – “It is difficult to tell staff that they have to return to their desks knowing that doing so could lead to 10 days in self-isolation,” writes Lucy Burton in the Telegraph. “If Chancellor Rishi Sunak really wants office life to return, these rules must be scrapped”
• “They think it’s all over …” – A sketch of yesterday’s press conference by the Telegraph‘s Madeline Grant
• “This team showed us life lived to the full – let’s bring freedom home now” – “The Prime Minister should learn from the mistakes of Gareth Southgate,” says the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson. “Caution only gets you so far”
• “Did ‘Lockdown Football’ cost England the Euros?” – England has been playing ‘Lockdown Football’, Mick Hume suggests in Spiked. It is, he says, “based on the same safety-first precautionary principles that have shackled British society during the Covid crisis”
• “The social-distancing generation” – “Lockdown has exacerbated the growing sense of isolation already experienced by many young people,” says Neil Davenport in Spiked. “That is why the past 15 months of social restrictions have not been quite as stifling an ordeal for the young as one might have expected”
• “Enjoy summer if you can. Winter is coming – and I fear that Covid restrictions will return” – Mark Harper MP had hoped that the work of the Covid Recovery Group would be done by now, he says in the Conservative Home. “However, I fear that our efforts will be required this autumn and winter to ensure that proper Parliamentary scrutiny of key Government decisions takes place”
• “Protect our children from this vaccine assault” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Belinda Brown calls for a “full and independent” investigation into vaccine safety before “any more vaccinations are given or the programme extended to younger age groups”
• “Forcing jabs on soldiers is illegal and immoral” – Forcing soldiers into taking the jab would be a “gross abuse of authority by the chain of command”, writes Lieutenant-General Jonathan Riley for the Conservative Woman
• “Covid: We need real leadership” – “We need the confidence to stop mass testing of healthy children which is just spreading fear,” writes Richard Tice in the Conservative Woman.  “Real leadership is about showing that courage, generating that understanding, instilling that confidence”
• “Gemma Peters – did I hear you right?” – Writing for the Unity News Network, Roger Watson responds to Gemma Peters, CEO of Blood Cancer U.K., who suggests that we should all be wearing masks for the benefit of those whose immune system are compromised
• “Peter Hitchens expects Covid restrictions to be back by autumn” – The Mail On Sunday columnist tells talkRADIO’s Mike Graham he takes all talk of ending the lockdown with a large dose of salt. “I’m not at all confident that we will get through to October without it all being brought back again,” he says
• “Irish PM accuses U.K. Government of ‘let it rip’ approach to lifting Covid restrictions” – Ireland will not be granting its citizens such freedoms as Boris has announced for the U.K., the Telegraph says. Taoiseach Micheál Martin believes that “steady wins the battle”
• “France moves to restrict restaurants to those vaccinated” – President Emmanuel Macron has announcex a package of new measures, Euronews reports, including a move to restrict restaurants, cafes and shopping centres to those that have been vaccinated or who have recently tested negative
• “Dutch PM Rutte apologises for lifting COVID-19 restrictions too soon” – Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has publicly apologised for the “miscalculation” in releasing restrictions too soon, according to Euronews. The country’s bars and clubs are now closed again
• “Spain’s coronavirus infections keep rising, regions impose restrictions” – Spain’s COVID-19 contagion rate has hit 368 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, Reuters reports, with new restrictions introduced in Catalonia and Valencia
• “Israel jabs heart transplant patients with COVID booster shot” – The Sheba Medical Centre in Israel has become the first in the world to administer a third shot of a Covid jab. According to the Jerusalem Post, it was given to a heart transplant patient
• “Rob Schneider goes off on coronavirus vaccine in Twitter tirade: ‘Just say no’” – Actor and comedian Rob Schneider cited the Second Amendment in denouncing the vaccines, Fox News reports, and urged his followers to “just say no”
• “FDA Attaches Warning Of Rare Nerve Disorder To Johnson & Johnson Vaccine” – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has attached a warning about a rare nerve disorder called Guillain-Barré syndrome to its fact sheet about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the LA Weekly reports
• “The 50 States Suffered Differentially During the Lockdowns and Pandemic” – Gregory van Kipnis examines economic performance indicators in the 50 states and the effectiveness of Government support for the economy, for the AIER
• “Covid vaccine: Thailand decides to mix jabs as cases spike” – Thai authorities have changed the country’s vaccine policy, the BBC reports, mixing up the Sinovac jab from China with the AstraZeneca jab in a bid to boost protection
• “Governments have ditched data for glamorous models” – Professor Ramesh Thakur in Spectator Australia says he couldn’t believe it when he read the decision about whether to ease England’s coronavirus restrictions was going to based on SAGE modelling. “Are Cabinet Ministers not capable of asking for an audit of past predictions?”
• “We’ve already got Danandrewstan. The nation can’t afford Gladystopia” – Terry Barnes makes a plea in Spectator Australia for Gladys Berejiklian, Premier of New South Wales, not to turn into Dan Andrews. “She is better than that”
• “This isn’t a terminus. This is just another way station” – “We were warned in advance that the Prime Minister was going to tone down the rhetoric about Freedom Day,” says Toby in an appearance on GB News. “And boy did he turn down the rhetoric”