News Round-Up

• “The U.K. economy has returned to its pre-pandemic size” – Nearly two years after the U.K. experienced its biggest economic collapse in 300 years, the economy has returned to pre-pandemic levels, writes Kate Andrews in the Spectator.
• “Polish scientists find gene that doubles risk of serious Covid” – Polish scientists have found a gene that they say more than doubles the risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19, a discovery they hope could help doctors identify people who are most at risk from the disease, reports Reuters.
• “‘We failed’: Denmark’s media is waking up to its flawed Covid coverage” – An editorial in Ekstra Bladet, Denmark’s leading tabloid, berates the Fourth Estate – including itself – for failing to hold ministers to account during the pandemic, writes James Lewisohn in the Spectator.
• “The Lab Leak: The Plots and Schemes of Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, and Francis Collins” – During the most critical weeks leading up to the obvious spread of the virus all over the Northeast of the U.S., leading to huge carnage in nursing homes, public health officials in the U.S. and U.K. were consumed not with a proper health response but with fear of dealing with the probability that this virus was man-made in China, writes Jeffrey A. Tucker on the Brownstone Institute.
• “The Covid cover-up: the biggest scandal of our times” – For almost two years much of the media has been ignoring one of the biggest stories in the world – the growing evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab, writes Frederick Edward in Bournbrook.
• “The lesson of Partygate is that lockdown laws are an ass” – As Boris Johnson sits lamely on political death row – literally cowering at the scene of the crime, No. 10 Downing Street – virtually everyone is missing the point, says Dan Wootton in the Daily Mail.
• “Welsh Government ‘overreacted to Omicron’, as costly Covid curbs had little impact on cases” – Mark Drakeford denies that scrapping the restrictions is a U-turn, despite data showing case rates remained practically equal to England, reports the Telegraph.
• “Florida Is Living With Covid – and Freedom” – The state’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, interviewed by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal discussing his advice against tests for the asymptomatic, his opposition to vaccination mandates, and life in Los Angeles under lockdown.
• “Omicron 91% less likely to be fatal compared to Delta: CDC study” – The evaluation of more than 70,000 infected Californians saw those with Omicron less than half as likely to need hospitalisation as those with Delta, reports the New York Post.
• “China’s Zero Covid tyranny is backfiring badly” – President Xi’s inability to backdown on a failing strategy threatens the country’s growth miracle, reports the Telegraph.
• “Major Molnupiravir Study Led by University of Oxford Full Throttle While Ivermectin Study Languishes?” – A major antiviral study opens in Wales involving the delivery of antiviral tablets via mail to the study participants, but where are the results of the Ivermectin trials, asks TrialSite News.
• “U.K. Midwives Union: Stop COVID-19 Mandates Now!” – The Royal College of Midwives, a health care worker trade union and professional association, is opposing vaccine mandates for its members, TrialSite News reports.
• “Everyone in the court agreed there had been a statistically significant rise in deaths in males 15-19 since May. The ONS also agreed that this needed investigating. No one claims to know why. However, they spent hours on excuses about why they couldn’t release data” – Read Dr Clare Craig’s report from the disappointing court hearing on Twitter.
• “Omicron Death Rate in South Africa Peaked at 15% of Delta Wave” – Severe disease in the Omicron surge was about half that of the Delta-led wave, reports Bloomberg.
• “Why I spoke out against lockdown” – Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, joins Brendan O’Neill to discuss how lockdown failed to protect the vulnerable, the catastrophic errors of the Covid modelling, and the suppression of critical voices during the pandemic.
• “The Lost Country of the Pacific” – Can a couple of curious explorers reunite Australia with the rest of the world? Anything’s possible with the help of Lamb, according to Australia’s annual Lamb ad.
• “Extinction Rebellion priests who said faith forced them to break the law given ‘perverse’ acquittal” – Former ministers call for urgent review of judicial guidance as a another jury acquits defendants who do not deny they have committed the unlawful actions of which they are accused, the Telegraph reports.
• “Plan B restrictions to be scrapped as Boris Johnson plots fightback” – Prime Minister scrambles to secure political survival in the wake of Downing Street parties scandal, starting with return of social freedoms – though not completely ending the mask mandate, according to the Telegraph.
• ““How Bad is my Batch”” – Dr Robert W. Malone on his Substack page tells the story of his near-fatal vaccine injury and its connection with a ‘bad batch’ of Moderna vaccines.
• “Woman who ‘wrote Government Covid rules’ held ‘boozy’ party during Christmas restrictions” – The Telegraph reports that ‘dozens’ of officials from the Cabinet Office’s Covid taskforce attended the event to mark Kate Josephs’ departure.
• “Expect another Omicron wave in early summer, SAGE says” – You what?! More of the modelling that got the last wave completely wrong by the sounds of it, in the Guardian.
• “James Treadwell and the true meaning of ‘cancel culture’” – James Treadwell, a professor of criminology at Staffordshire University, says that he is “being investigated for transphobia” after his employer received “formal and official” complaints about his gender-critical views on Twitter, writes Patrick West in the Spectator.
• “‘My job is to help women give birth, but I was banned from using the word “mother”’” – With gender-neutral language becoming obligatory for midwives, RT speaks to one home birthing attendant who has had enough of the “Orwellian trans takeover” and believes it’s time to confront it.
• “How our universities became sheep factories” – Our great institutions are now instruments of political indoctrination, writes Arif Ahmed in UnHerd.
• “How the radical Left turned American cities into slums” – America’s drug addiction crisis is made worse by progressive politicians, argue Michael Shellenberger and Steven Edginton in the Telegraph.