News Round-Up

• “It’s Freedom Day – but will our fear ever lift?” – After the public was scared into Covid compliance, it could prove tricky to coax them out, writes Harry de Quetteville in the Telegraph.
• “Covid keeps falling on Freedom Day: U.K.’s daily cases drop by 25%” – Government dashboard data show there 38,933 new positive tests over the last 24 hours, down a quarter on last week’s figure of 51,899. The number of people dying also fell to 125, reports the Mail.
• “‘Worrying’ fall in face-to-face GP appointments despite plea to ‘restore routine service’” – There are ‘complaints on a daily basis’ of patients struggling to see doctors in person after virtual consultations rose during the pandemic, according to the Telegraph.
• “The NHS still refuses to treat us like humans” – Bureaucrats and health leaders will not relinquish the powers they still have over us without a fight, with masks now “so embedded in NHS behaviour that we will probably never again see a nurse’s smile”, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Trudeau revokes Emergencies Act used to quash Freedom Convoy protests” – Trudeau made the announcement after authorities ended the blockades at the borders and the occupation in Ottawa by truckers and others opposed to COVID-19 restrictions, reports the Mail. Julius Ruechel draws attention to a Senate speech by Senator Donald Plett that he says may have led Trudeau to fear he would lose the vote in the chamber.
• “The tyranny of Trudeau” – “A grown-up leader could have used the opportunity to negotiate or ameliorate the public concerns. But Justin is not a grown-up leader. He is an obscenely over-promoted princeling man-child who decided he would deploy the weapon he has always used on his political enemies,” writes Douglas Murray in the Spectator.
• “Public Health Scotland Now Withholds COVID-19 Vaccine Data Including Deaths—Concerns Anti-Vaxxers Misuse but is this Responsible Government?” – It’s outrageous that a public health agency will stop all reports because some people in the public may use the data in inappropriate ways, says TrialSite News.
• “The CDC isn’t publishing large portions of the Covid data it collects” – The CDC published data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, but left out the numbers for 18 to 49 year-olds, reports the New York Times.
• “Freedom Day today has been hard won” – Lockdown fanatic Matt Hancock writing in the Mail is suddenly a fan of freedom, popping up to try to claim credit for the end of restrictions that I don’t recall him pushing for.
• “Covid Vaccines: The Next Vioxx?” – With the emergence of alarming new data on Covid vaccine and booster safety from Israel and Germany, the Swiss Doctor asks if Covid vaccines will overtake Vioxx and thalidomide as the largest ever drug scandal.
• “Is the Covid madness really over?” – Measures we would have laughed at quite recently were welcomed; it is the measures that we would laugh about now that ought to concern us, writes Jamie Walden in Bournbrook.
• “How seasonality affects the spread of a new virus” – Watch Professor Sunetra Gupta on Collateral Global explain the concept of the herd immunity threshold and how seasonality affects the way a virus spreads.
• “Breathe easy: how respiratory viruses evolve to become milder” – Matt Ridley in the Spectator takes Sunetra Gupta to task for her claim in the same publication last week that “there is no reason to believe [Omicron] is intrinsically less virulent” and “the idea that all viruses evolve in this direction is entirely incorrect”, arguing au contraire that there are four coronaviruses and 100 rhinoviruses that cause the common cold and all are mild or non-lethal, which he says “cannot be a coincidence”.
• “Rishi Sunak accused of breaking lockdown laws” – The Chancellor is among those issued with a police questionnaire over his alleged attendance at Boris Johnson’s Downing Street birthday gathering, reports the Telegraph.
• “Canadian health officials greenlight a plant-based COVID-19 vaccine” – A plant-based Covid vaccine, which Canadian officials are lauding as a breakthrough for the nation’s biotech industry, will soon be available to Canadians after receiving approval, reports the Mail.
• “The Ukraine invasion is good news for Wall Street” – A proper crisis is exactly what Wall Street traders want – to provoke yet another stimulus package, as well as the cancellation of interest rate rises, writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “We are powerless to stop Vladimir Putin’s aggression” – The West has foolishly deprived itself of the option of unleashing an all-out economic war on Putin’s regime because it has pursued a policy of slashing carbon emissions to the exclusion of all other concerns, writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “Liberals burn books too” – The truth is that wherever ‘liberals’ gain power, they retain their grip on power with tactics as tenacious and duplicitous as any other type of elite, argues Alexander Adams in Bournbrook.
• “Fair Play for Women loses census appeal” – Feminist campaign group Fair Play for Women has lost its case on appeal at the Scottish Court of Session over the question of whether some people should be allowed to provide false information in the census on the question of sex, writes Helen Saxby in the Critic. Bizarrely, providing false information has now been given the green light.
• “If the Bishop of Ely’s woke idiocy prevails, he’ll have to demolish his own cathedral” – By endorsing the removal of a monument from a Cambridge chapel, Stephen Conway is not just rejecting common sense – he’s licensing vandalism, argues Simon Heffer in the Telegraph.

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