News Round-Up

• “Nicola Sturgeon is losing her grip as half-baked vaccine passport scheme unravels” – Once so sure-footed on Covid, the Scottish First Minister is increasingly muddled, writes Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph.
• “Just half of children in England want a Covid vaccine” – Researchers surveyed more than 27,000 nine to 18 year-olds across the country earlier this year ahead of the controversial plans to jab healthy secondary school pupils and found exactly 50% wanted the vaccine, with the youngest and poorest the least likely to accept a jab.
• “Covid has made us a nation of hysterics. It’s time to get a grip” – There is no shortage of fuel, just an excess of moronic behaviour, writes Robert Taylor in the Telegraph. He asks: “How on earth would we respond to a real crisis?”
• “Another lockdown would hurt the NHS” – The NHS is once again in trouble, writes Amy Jones in UnHerd. A mix of “bed blocking”, staff shortages and increased presentations to A&E have all conspired against it and we may be looking at a “firebreak” lockdown to “save” it once again.
• “Got long Covid symptoms? Well, they might be something else” – Nearly a million people across the U.K. have long Covid-type symptoms, according to the latest survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but this is based on self-reporting rather than confirmatory tests, according to the Times.
• “Lockdowns may have caused us to think less about others and the future” – Covid lockdowns may have made Britons more selfish, a team of researchers from the University of York have found.
• “Petrol crisis will cause spike in Covid cases, experts warn” – Professor Paul Hunter has said cases will inevitably rise if people go back to using buses and trains, but he added this would not trigger a “major surge”, thanks to the U.K. vaccine rollout.
• “Defying Delta: Back to school goes better than feared” – School for children in many nations has been underway for more than a month and fears the Delta coronavirus variant would derail in-person learning have largely proven unfounded, Reuters reports.
• “Reclaim’s Laurence Fox: I will fight this to the death” – Kathy Gyngell interviews Lawrence Fox in the Conservative Woman a year after founding political party, Reclaim.
• “Boris Johnson needs to get a grip” – Unless our Prime Minister gets a grip soon Britain is going to decide that – just like Labour in the 1970s – Boris isn’t working, writes Dan Wootton in MailOnline.
• “Pfizer submits data to FDA on Covid vaccine in children aged five to 11” – Pfizer and BioNTech have submitted initial trial data for their COVID-19 vaccine in kids aged five to 11 to the Food and Drug Administration for review, but approval may not come for many weeks.
• “New York state vaccine mandate for medical workers goes into effect” – New York state’s vaccine mandate for all medical workers is now in effect, potentially putting 83,000 workers at risk of termination. Hospitals across the state say they support the mandate, but some are confronting staffing shortages as a result, Errol Barnett reports on CBS News.
• “Ivermectin ban sparks row between medical professionals in Australia” – Conflict has arisen between Australian citizens, health staff and professors after a recent decision to ban health practitioners from prescribing Ivermectin to COVID-19 patients, TrialSiteNews reports.
• “Greta Thunberg mocks world leaders as she addresses climate summit” – Greta Thunberg mocked world leaders, including Boris Johnson, accusing them of making “empty promises” on climate change as she opened a youth summit in Milan today. Change the record, sweetheart.
• “The New Yorker asks, should the climate movement embrace sabotage?” – In this guest essay on Watts Up With That, Eric Worrall explores accusations that the New Yorker is promoting ecoterrorism by publishing the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline and a podcast on “Should the climate movement embrace sabotage?”
• “Climate policy meets cold reality in Europe” – The rush to renewables causes severe energy price spikes and shortages; Biden’s policies would do the same in the U.S., writes Allysia Finley in the Wall Street Journal.
• “Trans ideology has taken over on the Tories’ watch” – Sajid Javid says trans dogma is “unscientific”. So why is he letting it overrun the NHS, asks Caroline Ffiske in Spiked.
• “Jordan Peterson’s return to Cambridge is a critical test of our commitment to free speech” – That he has been re-invited goes some way to removing the stain on our institution, writes Dr. Arif Ahmed in the Telegraph.
• “The scapegoating of Peter Thiel” – Being thoughtful is dangerous in a society where everyone copies each other, writes Luke Burgis in UnHerd.
• “Weird binary: Not hypocrisy, compliance signalling” – When it comes to the persecution of conservatives (especially white conservatives) and demographic shift, progressives put out peculiarly alternating messages: “It’s great – it isn’t happening – it’s great – it isn’t happening – it’s great.” Alexander Adams explores this “weird binary” in Bournbrook Magazine.
• “The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has misled Parliament over the cost of Net Zero” – In this Twitter thread, the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Harry Wilkinson examines why we desperately need a proper assessment of the full costs of Net Zero.