News Round-Up

• “Covid booster vaccines for all over-50s could be shelved” – Sources close to JCVI say a “far more restricted” group, focused on those most in need, may instead be targeted with booster vaccine doses, reports the Telegraph.
• “Top university the first in the U.K. to ban unvaccinated students ” – Hartpury University and College says it will be a “mandatory requirement” for those living on campus to prove their vaccination status, reports the Telegraph.
• “It’s time to junk the emergency Covid powers” – Ministers have become far too accustomed to ruling by decree, writes David Axe in Spiked.
• “Unions urge Commons Speaker to take tougher line on unmasked MPs” – Ministers and backbenchers have been criticised for their unwillingness to take ‘basic measures to help protect staff’, reports the Guardian.
• “Can ministers fight off the threat of another Covid schools crisis?” – Cases are rising as the new term approaches, but that need not mean ruining another academic year, writes Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph.
• “The Covid vaccines affect periods. Are we allowed to talk about this?” – “If you vaccinate an entire population, even rare side effects will add up to thousands of people. Is it so wrong to talk about this,” asks Lara Prendergast in the Spectator.
• “Sweetening the Covid Kool-Aid” – Incentivising Covid vaccination calls medical ethics into question, writes Rev. Dr. William Philip in the Critic.
• “How are the vaccines affected by the Delta variant?” – Has the emergence of the Delta, or Indian, variant reduced the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and if so by how much, asks Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “I’m angry about Covid lies – tennis legend Pat Cash on TCW TV” – Kathy Gyngell from TCW Defending Freedom interviews Pat Cash on Covid and his views on the authorities’ response to it.
• “Poor Jacinda Ardern, trapped in her arrogant Zero Covid policy” – While she condemns New Zealand to perpetual lockdowns, the rest of the Western world is getting vaccinated and moving on from the virus, writes Matthew Lesh in the Telegraph.
• “China is finding out the price of ‘zero-Covid’” – “Back in March, Chris Whitty said that, in Britain, a new wave of Covid would meet a wall of vaccinated people. In China, the wall is still far from finished,” writes Cindy Yu in the Spectator.
• “Environmental Protection Agency’s Reporting on Chemicals Questioned” – The EPA is changing the way it gathers data on commercial chemicals, prompting concerns from some environmental activists at a time when the agency is already under scrutiny after whistleblowers’ allegations that it’s fast-tracking dangerous chemicals because of industry pressure, reports the Epoch Times.
• “AR6 and The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum” – “The IPPC does not believe the models can be incorrect, they conclude that we simply need to introduce another factor. This is Karl Popper’s definition of pseudoscience, a hypothesis that cannot be falsified,” writes Andy May in Watts Up With That.
• “Hydrogen: don’t believe the hype” – Hydrogen is not as clean as it seems – and it won’t fulfil our energy needs, writes Rob Lyons in Spiked.
• “The Orwell Foundation has let George Orwell down” – “Surely if a charity bearing Orwell’s name has a purpose, it is to keep the flame of intellectual freedom alive,” writes Toby in the Spectator.
• “Sympathy for the Incel” – Responding to the wicked actions of Jake Davison by even further disparaging and marginalising such men does not seem like much of a solution, writes Collingwood in Bournbrook Magazine.
• “The Godfather of Critical Race Theory” – Unlike today’s activists, Derrick Bell wanted to save America, writes Tomiwa Owolade in UnHerd.
• “Has the media coverage of Covid stoked fear and panic?” – John Tierny says on talkRADIO that some leaders have exploited the pandemic to advance their left-wing political agenda: “They’re seizing on a leftist version of science to justify the policies they want.”