News Round-Up

• “Covid: England must stick with Plan B to protect NHS – PM” – PM says it would be “folly” to think pandemic is over – as hospitals face “considerable” pressure, reports the BBC.
• “Covid: Lincolnshire hospitals declare ‘critical incident’ over staff shortages” – Health bosses in Lincolnshire say there are “significant pressures” due to staff absences, reports the BBC.
• “Masks in schools are as pointless as they are cruel” – Nearly two years into the pandemic, the ‘one last heave’ argument is wearing very thin indeed, writes Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
• “Our Covid measures are incoherent” – Have children not suffered enough to be spared the misery of mask-wearing, even if ministers say it is a temporary measure, asks this Telegraph lead article.
• “We’re spending millions on Covid antivirals, but do they work?” – The Government failed to exploit the opportunity of a much cheaper treatment – vitamin D, writes James Le Fanu in the Telegraph.
• “Covid test distributor shut for Christmas after receiving 2.5 million lateral flows for pharmacies” – Alliance Healthcare stopped deliveries between December 25th-28th, despite receiving new supply of tests on Christmas Eve, reports the Telegraph.
• “University of Liverpool-led Study Demonstrates in Mouse Model that Omicron Variant 100-Fold Less Severe than Delta” – More encouraging findings reported inTrialSite News.
• “The Zoom Class Gets Covid” – “What they attempted in 2020-21 was without precedent in the modern world. It did not finally work, even to achieve the aim of keeping the professional classes disease free. This is perhaps the moment when it all finally comes to an end, not with repudiation but with resignation, acquiescence, and surrender,” writes Jeffrey A. Tucker at the Brownstone Institute.
• “Criminally stupid” – Are you right, in the interest of society, in compelling people to be vaccinated, or is it the individual’s right to refuse to be vaccinated, asks Alex Story in the Critic.
• “A Tale of Two Omicrons…” – Rusere Shoniwa writes about Omicron and the shifting of the vaccine goalposts on Left Lockdown Sceptics.
• “‘Super stranded’ patients take up 3,000 more NHS hospital beds in a year” – Drive to free up spaces for urgent care in peril as number of patients stuck on wards for at least three weeks exceeds Christmas 2020 figure, reports the Telegraph.
• “Cut Covid isolation for schoolchildren to five days to minimise lost learning, Government urged” – Robert Halfon, the Tory Chairman of the Education Select Committee, has warned young people could face yet another term of interrupted education, as mass testing of healthy pupils continues, reports the Telegraph.
• “True learning comes from teachers, not screens” – Frank Palmer is not impressed with the shift to online learning in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “We’ve upgraded our facemasks at the surgery: you should too” – Patronising article from Dr. Mark Porter in the Times that tacitly concedes masks are basically useless, but promotes them anyway.
• “Ipsos Mori Poll: UK People Reject Expensive Climate Action” – According to Ipso Mori, 83% of the British people want drastic climate action, but support “drops off rapidly” when people are asked to make personal sacrifice, reports Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That.
• “2021: The Year the Electric Vehicle Batteries Burned” – Are electric vehicles inherently unsafe? This is a question more people may be asking, as realisation grows that 2021 was a horror year for battery fire vehicle recalls. More from Eric Worrall in WUWT.
• “Careless civil servants are about to cause chaos with smart meters” – A determination to turn off 2G means that millions of the devices will have to be replaced – again, writes Andrew Orlowski in the Telegraph.
• “Knit picking” – How the invisible knitting of Michelle Obama led to the cancellation of Kristy Glass, according to Kathrine Jebsen Moore in the Critic.
• “New York prioritises nonwhite people in COVID-19 treatment distribution plan” – When it comes to distributing two new COVID-19 treatments in New York, officials have been instructed to prioritise nonwhite people, reports the Gazette.