News Round-Up

• “UK Covid cases drop almost 10,000 in a week” – Although seven-day case rate continues to rise, numbers have been below 50,000 for several days.
• “Forcing children to self-isolate was ‘needless’” – Oxford study suggests Covid can be controlled better by tests than quarantine.
• “Sectors where double-jabbed key staff WON’T have to isolate if pinged” – Updated guidance issued across England said “a limited number of named workers may be able to leave self-isolation under specific controls for the purpose of undertaking critical work only”.
• “BBC pulls local morning TV bulletins as ‘pingdemic’ leads to staff shortages” – Breakfast programme’s regional coverage in England off air until September at least – with further regional programmes at risk.
• “Covid vaccine passports WILL be required to get into Tory conference” – EXCLUSIVE: Tory insiders told MailOnline that proof people are double-jabbed is set to be required at the gathering in Manchester in October. Several prominent MPs have already said they won’t be going as a result.
• “Lockdown Summit: ‘The Government has frightened us senseless’” – A write-up of last weekend’s Lockdown Summit by Sally Beck in the Conservative Woman.
• “The Bog Roll Bandits are back… don’t panic! ” – Supermarket shelves are being stripped bare again, because of a combination of supply shortages and the return of panic buying, writes Richard Littlejohn in his Daily Mail column.
• “Biden falsely claims you WON’T get COVID if you have the shot” – Joe Biden overinflated the efficiency of vaccines during his gaffe-filled town hall speech on Wednesday. “You’re OK,” he assured. “You’re not going to – you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
• “Get a Covid test BEFORE heading to Cornwall, tourism bosses warn” – Visit Cornwall’s chief is asking visitors to see this holiday season as a “summer of understanding”, while the region’s council is asking visitors to “respect local communities in holiday hotspots”.
• “Almost 40% of cases are among holidaymakers from Spain and Portugal” – Infection rates among travellers returning to England from Portugal and Spain were twice as high as France’s, which is the only country under special ‘amber-plus’ restrictions.
• “Guitarist Eric Clapton says he’ll CANCEL shows at venues that ‘discriminate’ by requiring vaccination” – Reacting to the Government insisting on vaccine passports to access to live venues and nightclubs, musician Eric Clapton said he would cancel shows at places that discriminated against the unvaccinated.
• “Birmingham restaurant issues furious rant against customers” – Alex Claridge, chef-owner of The Wildnerness, a modern British fine dining restaurant in Birmingham, told the Daily Mail he was “flabbergasted” by customers who are cancelling reservations because he’s insisting that customers wear masks.
• “Here in Australia, this childish reliance on lockdowns will eventually end in tears” – The wheels on the bus go round and round for a zero-Covid strategy that has no exit.
• “Eating disorders: The terrible impact of the pandemic on the young” – Admissions soared during lockdown, and NHS bosses warn they are running out of beds.
• “Did scientists stifle the lab-leak theory?” – Jeremy Farrar’s account of his role in the suppression of the lab leak theory raises more questions than it answers, says Ian Birrell in UnHerd.
• “Do these vaccines even work?” – Professor Roger Watson has written a fairly measured piece about the fact that the Covid vaccines appear to be less effective than billed.
• “Suppression Plans Straight From CCP Play Book” – “Perhaps we have advanced as a society since those pandemic plans of 2019?” writes Adam Creighton for AIER. “If so, it’s towards a more authoritarian, controlling future. As part of its 100th anniversary celebrations this year, the Chinese Communist Party might count the successful export of disease management.”
• “As Covid cases rise across Australia, the Government’s never-ending war on Covid intensifies” – Australia’s leaders make Boris Johnson look like the freedom-touting Churchillian he pretends to be, writes Thomas McKenna in Bournbrook Magazine.
• “Jeff Bezos vows to fight climate change, but space tourism could do more harm, critics say” – Mr. Bezos says space tourism is a first step toward moving people (and heavy industry) into space to avert an energy crisis on Earth. But couldn’t he have made the point without burning up millions of tons of fossil fuel?
• “A war on woke? I wish” – It’s a myth that Boris Johnson’s government is fighting a culture war, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Schools minister Nick Gibb: Teach ‘dead white men’ with pride” – Black children should study the works of “dead white men” as decolonising the curriculum will not create a more equal society, the schools minister Nick Gibb says.
• “In defence of footballers taking the knee” – In his latest Spectator column, Toby says he now accepts that footballers taking the knee are not rabid neo-Marxists, but calls for the same understanding to be extended to the fans who are bound to boo the gesture when the football season resumes next month.
• “Wokeness as a bootlegger-baptist coalition” – Lockdown Sceptics contributor Noah Carl compares the unholy alliance between the self-righteous and the self-interested in support of woke nonsense to the coalition between bootleggers and baptists during Prohibition.
• “‘We’re not woke’, says Unilever boss” – Unilever CEO Alan Jope seeks to distance the consumer goods giant from Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling ice cream in “occupied Palestinian territories”.
• “CDC makes another adjustment to the number of Covid vaccine death reports, this time reducing it by more than 6,000” – Alex Berenson has tweeted an update to his news yesterday that the CDC more than doubled the number of Covid vaccine death reports.