News Round-Up

• “Covid curbs never meant to be part of daily life, Sajid Javid says” – Sajid Javid heralded the end of Covid restrictions as a historic moment – though somewhat spoiled it by urging people to remain vigilant against the virus and said Covid “isn’t done with us”, reports the Mail.
• “Lifting restrictions is the right thing to do” – The protection against Covid should rely upon personal responsibility, with minimal cost to society and the state, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
• “Johnson’s decision is political, but it’s right to end Covid restrictions in England” – The cost of lockdown has been appalling, but the crisis is over, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins.
• “Data on Covid dashboard will no longer be published at weekends” – Saturday and Sunday cases to be added to Monday’s figures, in first sign that the Government’s dashboard will soon be wound down, reports the Telegraph.
• “It’s a time for celebration but the hardest thing of all will be to remember who we were before” – By following ‘the Science’, some of the population were given the feeling of being morally superior – who knew ‘virtue’ could be addictive, asks Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Ending Mandates Does Not Strip Government of the Ability to Do This Again” – How we navigate the end of mandates determines whether we win our freedom or whether we allow our leaders to normalise a Brave New World with conditional rights that can be turned off again during the next ’emergency’, says Julius Ruechel.
• “U.K.’s Covid outbreak has now been shrinking for 21 days” – Daily U.K. Covid data shows 41,130 infections were logged, 11% lower than last Tuesday, meaning the Omicron wave has now been shrinking since February 2nd, according to the Mail.
• “Prem expected to keep restrictions despite Boris abolishing Covid regs” – The Premier League is planning to take a cautious approach to relaxing its Covid protocols despite Boris Johnson’s announcement that coronavirus regulations will be abolished, the Mail reports.
• “Shameless hoarders reveal mounds of free rapid swabs” – The Government website ran out last night with packs still unavailable online and via the 119 phone line this morning after Boris Johnson said they would be phased out in six weeks, reports the Mail.
• “Covid control-freaks haven’t gone away” – The biggest danger now is those folk in the media and politics who should know better continuing to propagate the myth that we remain in the midst of a dangerous pandemic, writes Dan Wootton in the Mail.
• “Whitty and Vallance use Downing Street briefing to warn on Covid threat” – Witless and Unbalanced were up to their old tricks again, painting a grim picture of the ongoing threat after Boris Johnson declared that England is ditching all legal restrictions and free tests, the Mail reports.
• “Ottawa Mayor Wants to Sell Trucks Confiscated from Freedom Convoy Protesters” – Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson proposed selling trucks and other vehicles seized during the police’s violent dismantling of the Freedom Convoy, reports Breitbart News.
• “PM Trudeau freezing protestors’ bank accounts should worry us all. It illustrates why we must resist a programmable central bank digital currency” – Lockdown sceptic MP Steve Baker tweets his worries about digital currency and government control.
• “New Zealand protesters take aim at Jacinda Ardern: ‘She has to go’” – Freedom Convoy demonstrations against Covid vaccine mandates have grown into a wider expression of frustration with the country’s rules, the Telegraph reports.
• “Students have been cheated out of proper teaching, says professor” – With the worst of the pandemic behind us and the vast majority of adults triple-jabbed for Covid, our universities ought to be thriving hubs of life and education once more, writes Frank Furedi in the Mail.
• “Yet another paper shows all-cause mortality risk is greater than benefit for the Covid vaccines” – Steve Kirsch reports on the new paper from Stephanie Seneff and Kathy Dopp that draws on sophisticated analysis of U.S. mortality trends to conclude that in most age groups the vaccines are doing more harm than good.
• “South Korea says Omicron Covid variant 75% less likely to kill than Delta strain” – People infected with Omicron are nearly 75% less likely to develop serious illness or die than those who contract Delta, real-world data released on Monday by South Korea’s health authorities showed, reports Reuters.
• “Ugandans would face fines, jail for refusing Covid jab under new law” – Mandatory vaccination is coming to Uganda, according to Reuters. Why, when the country has been affected so little by the pandemic and Omicron has already come and gone?
• “‘Strong possibility’ Covid jabs will be given every autumn” – Professor Adam Finn, who advises No.10 on the vaccine rollout, said the “direction of discussion” was already for more booster doses this winter, while an annual drive was an “open question”, reports the Mail.
• “COVID-19 vaccines: we need immediate release of anonymised data from Yellow Card scheme” – The safety profiles of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines must be kept under strict and independent surveillance, which can be achieved only with immediate, public release of the anonymised raw data collected under the Yellow Card reporting scheme, writes retired Biology Professor and Daily Sceptic contributor Richard Ennos in the BMJ.
• “Expensive and wasteful heat pumps are not the solution to Britain’s energy crisis” – Installing lower carbon heat sources could cost homeowners £20,000, plus an extra £30,000 for insulation, writes Roy Faulkner in the Telegraph.
• “It’s too late to break Europe’s gas reliance on Russia” – Britain, like all of western Europe, would be in a much stronger position if it had not allowed climate policy to take precedence over geopolitics, writes Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “The green industrial revolution is a lie” – The U.K.’s green sector has not grown in nearly a decade, writes Ben Pile in Spiked.
• “Most of my colleagues in the mainstream media live in detached houses, they have decent gardens, they have no problems at all with working from home” – Toby gives his views on GB News on the behaviour of members of the media during lockdown.

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.