News Round-Up

• “Britain’s Covid experts ‘abandoned their objectivity and misled with alarming models’” – A Government adviser delivers a damning verdict on the scientists’ pandemic response, adding they “weren’t looking at the bigger picture”, the Telegraph reports.
• “Gavin Williamson’s knighthood hard to justify, Downing Street admits” – Although Downing Street has told ministers to defend Gavin Williamson’s honour publicly, some No 10 officials are understood to have said it is difficult to justify the decision, the Mail reports.
• “What IS going on with the Met’s farcical Partygate probe?” – It is now more than three weeks since Boris Johnson received a questionnaire from the Metropolitan Police about his attendance at some of the events, the Mail reports.
• “Hong Kong bet on Zero-Covid. Now it’s facing a ‘preventable disaster’” – Morgues are nearly at capacity, hospitals overwhelmed and, as fears grow of a citywide lockdown, panicked shoppers have stripped supermarket shelves bare, reports CNN.
• “The Nudge: Ethically Dubious and Ineffective” – Dr. Gary Sidley at the Brownstone Institute writes that the ubiquitous deployment of psychological strategies – which rely on inflating emotional distress to change behaviour – raises profound ethical questions.
• “Episode 12: Interview with Dr. Gary Sidley” – Dr. Sidley talks to Ian Miller on the Unmasked podcast about what happened with Covid policy, why, and where do we go from here?
• “Doctors’ Sanctioned for Speaking Out Against Official Covid Policies” – Six U.S. doctors have had their licences suspended and 18 more threatened as they are accused of spreading misinformation about COVID-19, according to TrialSite News.
• “SAGE admits its models were ‘at variance to reality’. But why?” –  In a democracy, we need a way of scrutinising models: to be crystal clear about the assumptions used, and how using different assumptions would change the picture, says Michael Simmons in the Spectator.
• “A Letter to Andrew Hill” – Watch Dr. Tess Lawrie’s address to Dr. Andrew Hill on Oracle Films.
• “How the FDA Botched the Vaccine Rollout for Young Kids” – The agency had to put out a fire that it created, writes Dr. Vinay Prasad in City Journal.
• “Lord Frost joins 29 Tory MPs in demanding PM ends ban on fracking” – As many as 30 Tory MPs and peers have signed a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to lift the fracking ban, introduced in 2019, as they say it could prevent a future energy crisis, reports the Mail.
• “While Rome burns, the Bank of England fiddles with an ‘inclusive’ rebrand” – Threadneedle Street has lost the plot with its decision to ditch St George’s Cross, writes Ben Marlow at the Telegraph.
• “The week that fashion cancelled women” – Misogyny is becoming so entrenched in the industry that women are at risk of being erased, explains Lisa Armstrong in the Telegraph.
• “NHS child gender clinic forced into U-turn over ‘bombardment of wokery’” – Black Lives Matter’s ‘rainbow fist’ logos added to employees’ email signatures have been removed after a backlash from staff, reports the Telegraph.
• “The Tories are still empowering tech firms to repress our free speech” – Once created in law, this new category of “harmful” content will become a legal grey zone where censorship is implicitly encouraged, writes Juliet Samuel in the Telegraph.
• “How Western elites exploit Ukraine” – The Ukraine crisis is undoubtedly a tragedy, but it is merely the latest in a series of geopolitical events stretching back at least 20 years in which the media coverage has been biased, one-sided, and ideological, writes Arta Moeini in UnHerd.
• “Scotland’s shame” – Stonewall’s grip on the Scottish Government is now complete after the announcement of the Gender Recognition Act reform bill in Scotland yesterday, says Stephanie Davies-Arai in the Critic.
• “The SNP’s Gender Recognition Bill is a threat to women” – The Scottish government wants to make it easier to change gender – regardless of the consequences, writes Jo Bartosch in Spiked.
• “To Protest Russia, Ivan Drago Blurred Out Of Rocky IV” – The latest from the Babylon Bee.

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