News Round-Up

• “Backlash against face masks in secondary schools as Covid cases ease” – Tory MPs call for rethink amid warnings over effect on learning as new infections decline, reports the Telegraph.
• “Has Omicron peaked in London?” – The present best-case scenario is that Omicron peaks early in the new year and then falls just as fast as it did in South Africa, writes Fraser Nelson in the Spectator.
• “Fewer London Covid patients needing hospital ventilation, suggesting Omicron is milder” – The share of those on ventilators in the capital has dropped from around 20% in summer and autumn to less than 8% now, reports the Telegraph.
• “We’re nowhere near learning to live with Covid” – Getting back to normal means overhauling Test and Trace and rethinking mandatory isolation, writes MP and former Public Health Minister Steve Brine in the Telegraph.
• “The Pandemic Endgame” – An international update from the ‘Swiss Doctor’, including the return of flu (with Sweden experiencing its strongest flu wave in a decade), California’s Covid mortality overtaking Florida’s, and Australia’s sky-rocketing Omicron outbreak.
• “Dutch lockdown protesters mauled by police dogs and hit with batons” – Demonstrators, most of whom didn’t wear masks and ignored social distancing guidelines, defied the local government’s outlawing of the protests amid police strikes, reports Mail Online.
• “A wounded PM and ailing economy force England to ‘go Swedish’ on Covid” – It’s easy to see why the Government is reluctant to add to the economic pain with tougher restrictions, writes Larry Elliot in the Guardian. Yes, the Guardian.
• “Bin collections cancelled across the UK as Government plans for Covid absences in public sector to rise by a quarter” – Shortage of lateral flow devices contributing to widespread disruption as hospital trust declares ‘extreme and unprecedented’ staff absences, reports the Telegraph.
• “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter account is suspended” – This is the fifth strike for Greene, who was last suspended in August for saying that vaccines were ‘failing’ to reduce the spread of COVID and that the FDA shouldn’t have approved them, reports the Daily Mail.
• “We have become too reliant on foreign doctors” – Poaching doctors from low income countries is both immoral and unethical, argues Consultant Surgeon J Meirion Thomas in the Telegraph.
• “Many Climate Ambitions Will End With 2021” – In the U.K., Germany and France, leaders walk back as their plans’ exorbitant price tag becomes clear, writes Joseph C. Sternberg in the Wall Street Journal.
• “Revealed: The hidden cost of going green” – Homeowners face huge bills to upgrade electricity supplies for heat pumps and car chargers, reports the Telegraph.
• “France and Germany at odds over EU proposal to classify nuclear and gas energy as ‘green’” – The French Government is keen to pursue a policy that the German Economy Minister has called ‘greenwashing’ and ‘wrong’, reports the Telegraph.
• “David Amess and the deafening silence on Islamism” – This year we learned that even the killing of an MP is not enough to force the political class to confront Islamist terror, writes Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
• “Guardian pulls poll after JK Rowling wins” – The Guardian has pulled entries to its online ‘Person of the Year’ competition after the Harry Potter author proved to be the runaway favourite from supporters writing in to nominate her name, the Spectator reports.
• “Kulldorff and Bhattacharya Respond: The Collins and Fauci Attack on Traditional Public Health” – Great Barrington Declaration authors Professor Martin Kulldorff and Professor Jay Bhattacharya respond in the Epoch Times to the revelations that U.S. Government scientists Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins conspired to demolish the Declaration and smear its authors as “fringe epidemiologists”.