News Round-Up

• “Rafael Nadal’s triumph is astounding but Novak Djokovic’s absence casts an inescapable shadow” – Daniil Medvedev, the losing finalist, was not the best player that Nadal could have faced – he was simply the best vaccinated player, writes Oliver Brown in the Telegraph.
• “Treasury ‘stopped Britain’s FBI from investigating Covid loans fraud’” – Treasury officials have been accused of rebuffing an attempt by the National Crime Agency to launch a sweeping investigation into fraudulent use of taxpayer-funded Covid handouts, the Telegraph reports.
• “Sunak pours taxpayer cash into online betting firm” – Campaigners and gambling charities sound the alarm over investments made under Covid support fund, including a £2m loan for BetConnect, an online betting exchange vying to become the “next Betfair”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Covid fatality rate set to resemble flu figures as reinfections are added to daily statistics” – ‘Dramatic increases’ in recording of reinfections will strongly impact average fatality rates and the ratio of cases to hospital admissions, writes Sarah Knapton in the Telegraph.
• “Covid cases fall AGAIN by 16% to 62,399 infections” – Latest Government statistics showed another 62,399 infections were recorded over the last 24 hours, down from 74,799 positive swabs last Sunday, the Mail reports.
• “Schools in England restore face mask rules after surge in Covid cases” – A number of schools in England are reinstating rules for pupils to wear facemasks after a surge in Covid cases, despite Government guidance last week which ended the requirement, reports the Mail.
• “Deaths due to delays in medical care QUADRUPLED in first lockdown” – Investigators warned of a “significant increase” in deaths linked to trouble accessing medical care, and said many of these patients would normally have gone to hospital, reports the Mail.
• “‘We are with the great Canadian truckers’: Trump backs Freedom Convoy” – Fines have been brought in in Nova Scotia for anyone blocking the highway, as Canadian truckers converged on Ottawa for a weekend of protests, reports the Mail.
• “Canadian truckers are driving freedom home” – Sonia Elijah in TCW Defending Freedom with an overview of international protests against vaccine mandates and other state overreach.
• “Whistleblowers share DOD medical data that blows vaccine safety debate wide open” – Daniel Horowitz on the Blaze reports on the testimony of three military doctors who say they have seen in a military medical database “a shocking and sudden spike in nearly every ICD code for common vaccine injuries in 2021”.
• “The story of N-antibodies and why they are so important” – UCSF Professor Aditi Bhargava brought up the issue with N-antibodies in November of 2021. People have been too quick to dismiss her concern, writes Steve Kirsch on his Substack page.
• “More Cracks in the Edifice” – An overview of the state of play on vaccines and more from Omar Khan in Uncommon Wisdom.
• “Computing years of lost life: why actuaries really need to be able to do counterfactual reasoning” – Although the average age of death in the UK is around 82, if a person reaches 82 then on average the person can expect to live about another eight years. However, that doesn’t mean a typical person dying from Covid (average age of death also around 82) loses eight life years, as they are more likely to be vulnerable, write Norman Fenton and Martin Neil.
• “Can the Czech Republic challenge Europe’s vaccine orthodoxy?” – After flirting with the idea of vaccine mandates, the Czech Republic has taken its first tentative steps back down the road to normality, writes William Nattrass in the Spectator.
• “Grading the Governors: Who Locked Down and Who Opened?” – For every single one, from Governors Newsom and Cuomo to Noem and DeSantis, it was the most challenging policy-making of their careers, writes Michael Betrus at the Brownstone Institute.
• “No medical basis for requiring COVID-19 certificate on the NCS” – Some commonsense from the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway, which has said there is no medical basis for vaccine passports.
• “Climate Change Is Waycist!” – Poorer communities are always more vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, writes Paul Homewood on Not a Lot of People Know That. “The answer is not the abolition of fossil fuels, but to make those communities wealthier to enable them to be more resilient.”
• “I’m not only taking my career in my hands going forward, every time I write a column… I’m also potentially erasing everything I’ve ever accomplished” – Watch novelist Lionel Shriver discuss the cancellation of Scottish writer Kate Clanchy following racism allegations against her on GB News.
• “Experts warn of health fears over replacing ‘mum’ with ‘birth-giver’” – Greater use of gender-neutral terms can have “unintended consequences that have serious implications for women and children”, according to a paper due to be published this week, reports the Mail.
• “Children aged seven to be taught that they are not ‘racially innocent’” – Brighton and Hove City Council is accused of indoctrinating children though a five-year plan for an anti-racist education system, the Telegraph reports.
• “China’s censors have already won” – No longer does the regime just block, ban or cut scenes it does not like – it is now giving Western films a new twist to turn the state into the heroes of the story, writes Benedict Rogers in the Spectator.
• “Black academic who has thrown grenade into wokeness cult” – As you may guess from the title, Woke Racism – How A New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, author John McWhorter doesn’t pull his punches, writes Tom Leonard in the Mail.
• “Breathtaking aerial footage of the TruckersForFreedom protest in Ottawa, where well over 100,000 Canadian citizens have gathered to demand an end to Covid lies and mandates” – Tweet from Michael P. Senger.

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