News Round-Up

• “Strict Covid curbs now ‘less effective’, admits Sturgeon as Scotland’s isolation rules relaxed” – First Minister’s approach now more in line with England, as data show her tough measures failed to curb omicron spread, reports the Telegraph.
• “Covid rules ‘open to abuse’ as unions tell workers: You can stay away for 28 days without a sick note” – Staff shortage fears over new rules introduced to speed up Covid booster rollout, as teaching unions (again) urge schools to impose tighter curbs, the Telegraph reports.
• “Macron has crossed a line in his war on the unvaccinated” – The new year has not started well for Emmanuel Macron, says Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator – though Jonathan Miller thinks the latest outburst against the unvaccinated is calculated.
• “A life-threatening allergy to the vaccine? No, we won’t exempt you!” – Sue Atkinson in TCW is terrified of a repeat experience of the anaphylaxis she had from a previous vaccination, but was shocked when her GP phoned to say that she was not eligible for an NHS exemption.
• “The costly mistakes made with restrictions in health and social care” – If a hospital or care home does everything perceived to be helpful in stopping the spread of the virus, they will be free of any other kind of scrutiny, argues Jamie Walden in Bournbrook.
• “We were told to fear omicron – but it’s a pussycat compared to what came before” – After almost two gruelling years, it feels like we have forgotten what coping with a normal everyday illness is like, says Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Are South Asians more susceptible to Covid?” – Blacks and South Asians living in Britain have higher rates of death from Covid than the white majority. These disparities received a lot of attention at the start of the pandemic, but have since garnered much less interest, writes Noah Carl in his latest Substack post.
• “Fact check: are Sadiq Khan’s vaccination claims right?” – The Spectator takes Sadiq Khan to task for his plainly inaccurate claim (still not removed by Twitter) that: “At all ages – the vast, vast majority of people hospitalised with Covid have not yet been vaccinated.”
• “China’s zero-Covid strategy stretched to breaking point ahead of winter Olympics” – Despite mounting concerns over Beijing’s draconian approach to coronavirus, there is little chance it will change tack any time soon, reports the Telegraph.
• “NHS workers took average of 14 DAYS off sick every year BEFORE Covid” – Health service data shows there were 17.7million days of leave taken between April 2018 and March 2019 – the equivalent of around 14 days per worker, mainly for mental health problems, reports the Mail.
• “What if the largest experiment on human beings in history is a failure?” – A report from an Indiana life insurance company raises serious concerns, writes Dr Robert Malone on his Substack page.
• “4th Covid vaccine dose boosts antibodies 5-fold, Israeli study shows” – Israeli study on a fourth Covid jab has found it boosted antibody levels five-fold in a trial on medical staff. But this is lower than the rise seen in studies on the impact of the third Covid jab, reports the Mail.
• “January 4, 2022 – Heather Mac Donald – The Seth Leibsohn Show – Omny.fm” – Heather Mac Donald on “two years of wrongness regarding Wuhan Virus policy… whereas she was correct from the outset”.
• “EU: Natural Gas and Nuclear are now Green Energy” – The long predicted collapse of the EU renewable energy push has finally arrived, as the EU has effectively just admitted renewable energy does not work, writes Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That.
• “The Colston verdict is the triumph of values, not law” – “It seems that there is a defence to any charge of criminal damage if you ‘genuinely believe the owner consents to you doing the damage’. And it turns out that how genuine you are is a question for a jury,” writes Steven Barrett in the Spectator.
• “Kew Gardens founding father branded ‘enabler of slavery’ in woke row” – Sir Joseph Banks’ role is reappraised by English Heritage in the latest Year Zero trial of the dead, reports the Telegraph.
• “Maureen Lipman’s ‘Jewface’ criticism of Helen Mirren isn’t fair” – Brendan O’Neill wades into the latest identitarian row in the Spectator.
• “Michael Wolff on Random House’s Cancellation of Norman Mailer” – The dropping of a book of Mailer’s essays set for 2023 over an essay called “White Negro” in order to avoid controversy is another sign of how the literary consumer loses out in the culture wars, argues Wolff in the Ankler.
• “Preprint from Kaiser Permanente: ‘The true incidence of myopericarditis is markedly higher than the incidence reported to US advisory committees’” – David Zweig tweets out the main findings of a new study into vaccine side-effects.