News Round-Up

• “End could be in sight as Covid cases fall for seventh day in a row” – Boris Johnson warned it was ‘premature’ to assume Covid was beaten but many of his colleagues privately think the nation is firmly on the road to recovery, according to MailOnline.
• “How did the experts get ‘Freedom Day’ so wrong?” – Professor David Paton in Spiked says the precipitous fall in daily cases since ‘Freedom Day’ is good news for lockdown Sceptics.
• “SAGE expert says group left ‘scratching head’ over falling infections” – Modelling released ahead of ‘Freedom Day’ said it was realistic to expect six-figure cases in August and as many as 200,000 in a worst-case scenario. But there were just 29,000 across Britain yesterday, says MailOnline.
• “Here we go again” – “You know how I know public health authorities are lying?” asks Alex Berenson in his Substack newsletter. “Their own data.”
• “Covid authoritarianism sweeps Europe – but the economy is saved” – The lurch towards majoritarianism and the mobilisation of the state against a nonconformist minority is taking hold across the continent, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph.
• “How a Psychic Healer Blog Convinced the Government to Fund ‘Long Covid‘” – “The doors have, sadly, been thrown wide open to psychic healing and alternative wellness gibberish,” writes Phillip W. Magnus for AIER.
• “The Lancet, China and the origins of coronavirus” – Did the Lancet sit on evidence that showed Covid was transmissible by humans early on in the pandemic? asks Stuart Ritchie in the Spectator.
• “Shielding may have failed to protect those most at risk from Covid” – People shielding were far more likely to catch the virus than general population, Glasgow University study finds.
• “UNVACCINATED diners only: California restaurant says it’s having fun watching ‘heads explode’ over mandatory no-vax policy” – A California restaurant has refused to back down after being bombarded with negative press and customer reviews for posting a sign demanding that all diners provide proof that they have *not* been vaccinated against COVID-19.
• “Kirstie Allsopp has the right idea – when Covid cases are coming down, doom-peddlers should cheer up” – As the presenter has pointed out, despite light at the end of the tunnel, some people refuse to be pleased about good news, says Kathryn Flett in the Telegraph.
• “‘Your papers please’: how mandatory vaccination came to be” – From three weeks to flatten the curve to ‘your papers, please’, says Luke Perry in Bournbrook Magazine.
• “Vaccine passports plan ‘railroaded through’ despite ministers’ concerns” – Sources claim that the majority of ministers attending a Covid O meeting last week raised concerns over the policy, but were ignored, says the Telegraph.
• “Freedom for double jabbed as U.K. opens to world” – Boris Johnson to reopen country to EU and U.S. and also drop requirements for fully vaccinated Britons to take Covid tests, reports the Telegraph.
• “Patients died after operations to remove objects left inside them were cancelled due to Covid” – Researchers uncovered 23 reports from coroners in England and Wales who found deaths that were largely preventable had occurred, says the Telegraph.
• “Nicola Sturgeon accused of ‘Donald Trump-style meltdown’ over vaccine figures” – Annie Wells, the Scottish Tory health spokeswoman, says Ms Sturgeon was treating the public “like fools”.
• “Spain could replace France on the travel quarantine list” – Whitehall sources are increasingly confident that France will be removed from the ‘amber plus’ list, which requires people to self-isolate for 10 days on return even if fully vaccinated. But the bad news is Spain may be upgraded to ‘amber plus’, says MailOnline.
• “Government health chiefs say Covid testing is as good as isolation” – The Department of Health yesterday pointed to research which found daily contact testing was just as good at controlling transmission as the current isolation policy, reports MailOnline.
• “A quarter of Britons haven’t been hugged since pandemic began” – A survey of 1,000 Brits in May – when social distancing rules were still in place – found a quarter had not had physical human contact since last March, says MailOnline.
• “What else have ‘the experts’ got wrong? ” – If SAGE scientists got their predictions about the impact of ‘Freedom Day’ so wrong, what else have they been mistaken about, asks Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail.
• “Net Zero by 2050 is dead in the water. So what’s plan B?” – The truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of Net Zero are incompatible with democracy, says Fraser Myers in the Telegraph.
• “Tech giants rake in £137bn in just three months” – Google owner Alphabet, iPhone maker Apple and Microsoft pulled in total revenues of £136.5 billion over a three month period, they revealed in results just released.
• “Can opera survive the culture wars?” – A singer’s skin colour has become more important than his voice, says Heather Mac Donald in UnHerd.
• “Radical progressive activism and the Church of England” – Archbishop Cramner writes about a recent Civitas report on the woke capture of the Anglican Church.
• “27 Covid-Sceptic Memes to Get You Through the Day – Part 8” – OffGuardian’s Kim Usbourne with the latest round-up of sceptical memes.
• “Fauci talking out of both sides of his mouth” – Amusing compilation of clips showing Dr Anthony Fauci repeatedly contradicting himself.