News Round-Up

• “Lockdowns to control Covid no longer justified, SAGE adviser says” – Professor Andrew Hayward, of University College London, says population-wide measures shouldn’t be used “as we move into a situation where we’re coming to live with this virus forever”, reports MailOnline.
• “U.K. orders extra Covid vaccines for autumn 2022 booster campaign” – Pfizer has been asked to supply 35 million more Covid vaccine doses, with the final go-ahead for this year’s programme still awaited, reports the Guardian.
• “The problems posed by booster shots” – “While the desire of individual countries to protect their own citizens is understandable, it does pose a problem,” writes James Forsyth in the Spectator.
• “Why Don’t They Believe Us?” – Konstantin Kisin helps us to understand where vaccine hesitancy comes from in Tablet.
• “Workers are being experimented on with mandatory jabs, say U.S. medics” – “The ethical commitment to protect others does not require workers to surrender their bodily integrity and self-determination and accept ‘the’ intervention dictated by a governmental or quasi-governmental authority,” writes TCW Defending Liberty.
• “The picture is shifting on vaccines and transmission, re-shaping how we ‘learn to live’ with Covid” – Without a vaccine that completely blocks infection and transmission, the prospect of herd immunity goes out the window, writes Paul Nuki in the Telegraph.
• “Delta Variant Far Less Deadly than Previous Variants” – The Delta variant, which is responsible for most ‘cases’ now occuring, is far less deadly than previous versions of SARS-CoV-2, reports TrialSite.
• “The five key Covid truths that could have saved us from self-destruction” – These five key Covid truths could save many lives, and perhaps even avoid any further fall into lockdown lunacy, writes Neville Hodgkinson in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “Revealed: England’s pandemic crisis of child abuse, neglect and poverty” – Foster places are in short supply and council budgets are buckling as social service referrals increased by up to 40% in some areas during the past year of lockdowns, reports the Guardian.
• “Gorillaz return to the stage to play free gig for NHS workers at O2 Arena” – Concert-goers were required to show a negative Covid test to attend the gig which was the O2’s first full capacity live event since March 2020, reports Sky News.
• “CDC adjusts Florida’s Covid numbers after accusations of overcounting” – The CDC has revised Covid figures from the state of Florida after the Sunshine State’s Department of Health accused the federal agency of overcounting cases over the weekend, reports MailOnline.
• “Will FDA mRNA Vaccine Approval Ignore the “Elephant (not) in the Room”: Ultra-Low Absolute Risk Reductions?” – “The FDA’s failure to report the vaccines’ absolute risk reductions violates the FDA’s own guidelines for communicating evidence-based risks and benefits to the public,” writes Dr Ron Brown in TrialSite.
• “Andrew Sullivan says U.S. is wrong to pursue ‘illusory’ Covid victory” – “We cannot live isolated like this. We’ve never done this before. You can’t wrap yourself up in cotton wool for the rest of your life and you mustn’t let children not live,” says Andrew Sullivan, as reported in MailOnline.
• “‘This Will Blow Up Narratives’” – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis offers his predictions on how the Delta Covid variant will spread across states.
• “Macron’s authoritarianism will almost certainly backfire” – The French have a long history of vaccine hesitancy. But instead of reassuring the public, the Government has reached for the iron fist, writes Fraser Myers in the Telegraph.
• “Macron defied: Small French town leads charge refusing to implement ‘grotesque’ scheme” – A small French town is fighting back against Emmanuel Macron’s “grotesque” vaccine passport scheme, reports the Express.
• “Bournbrook podcast censored” – The latest episode of the Bournbrook Podcast The Week in Review, which touches on the vaccination of children against Covid, has been censored by YouTube, writes Michael Curzon.
• “The next financial crisis is coming” – The markets are almost certainly deep into the late stages of a bubble. At some point, something will spook them, writes Philip Pilkington in Newsweek.
• “Tears and technical chaos: Andrew Neil weighs up his future at GB News” – Insiders say veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil has been frozen out of decision-making by an Australian boss who may want GB News to become a ‘British Fox News’, reports the Telegraph.
• “Anti-vaxxer German nurse ‘injected up to 8,600 with saline solution’” – Thousands of people who received their first jab at a vaccination centre in Friesland, Germany, have been told to get another shot of the Covid vaccine after it was realised that their first were fakes, reports MailOnline.
• “Indicators of the Great Awokening” – “The Great Awokening constitutes the most rapid change in elite culture in recent history (possibly ever),” writes Noah Carl in his latest substack article.
• “Trump Jr blasts White House for using TikTok influencer to push vaccines” – Donald Trump Jr claims waterboarding would be better than watching a TikTok influencer’s video portraying White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki’s intern in a bid to boost Covid vaccinations, reports the Sun.
• “Will Brits pay through the nose for green boilers?” – “Given our incredible progress, a big bang approach to climate change is unnecessary and, if he’s not careful, it could end up costing Boris his job,” writes Dan Wootton in MailOnline.
• “Keeping a diesel is greener than buying a new electric car” – We should hold on to old cars until we have a better way of generating green energy than burning trees, writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “Herd Immunity ‘Not a Possibility’ With Delta Variant” – “Politicians and scientists are taking a long time to recognise that we are not in a Covid crisis and that there are more important things to be worrying about,” says Will in an appearance on talkRADIO.