News Round-Up

• “GPs told to work late to stop A&E crisis this Easter” – The NHS tells practices to provide “extended hours” as hospitals come under “unbearable” pressure during holiday season, the Telegraph reports.
• “Shanghai lockdown eases as Chinese throw themselves to their deaths” – Officials in Shanghai moved to ease the city’s draconian lockdown as public revolt hardens and cases continue to rise – though only as far as allowing districts with zero Covid cases over two weeks being allowed to open up, reports the Mail.
• “China leading citizens to jump from balconies in quest to achieve ‘Covid Zero’” – Like China’s previous efforts to contain the highly infectious Omicron variant, this one too is doomed to fail, although not before extracting an enormous cost, writes Steven Mosher at the New York Post.
• “The dystopian nightmare of ‘Zero Covid’” – Shanghai’s lunatic lockdown shows just how dangerous Covid fanaticism can be, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Jacinda Ardern admits she’s not a fan of vaccine mandates” – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reaffirmed her objection to vaccine mandates but claimed they were necessary to help the country move out of lockdowns, the Mail reports. Is that the sound of a ferret reversing?
• “The Cure Was Worse Than the Disease” – Roger Watson in the European Conservative reviews The Great Covid Panic, a new book which argues that, regardless of the efficacy of pandemic management measures, there was never an assessment of what the likely damage was going to be; the equation between benefit and damage was unbalanced, in fact, the damage side was left blank.
• “Omicron symptoms last half as long as the common cold” – Scientists at King’s College London studied 62,000 people during the Omicron outbreak in the U.K. and found that vaccination made the illness shorter and milder, reports the Mail.
• “Twitter bans Bill Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick” – Juanita Broaddrick was banned after publishing a tweet on April 9th which called into question the effectiveness of vaccines and argued they are being pushed so pharmaceutical companies can make big profits, the Mail reports.
• “Sex assault victims face eight-year wait for justice as cases are taking 50% longer to get through courts than before Covid pandemic, new figures show” – The worst delays are in North Yorkshire where sex assault victims waited an average of more than 16 years from an offence to the conclusion of their case, the Mail reports.
• “How Germany’s Crazy New Rules Punish Natural Immunity” – In what must be one of the most mind-bending public health measures adopted anywhere in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany recently reduced the period of validity of the country’s COVID-19 “Certificate of Recovery” from six months to 90 days – but only for people who are unvaccinated, writes Robert Kogon at the Brownstone Institute.
• “Open a Public Inquiry into COVID-19 Vaccine Safety” – Sign the petition on the Parliament website: “There has been a significant increase in heart attacks and related health issues since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines began in 2021. This needs immediate and full scientific investigation to establish if there is any possible link with the Covid-19 vaccination rollout.”
• “Could we be heading for a second Covid recession?” – Government bailouts earned us an early exit from the Covid recession, but the price of governments buying an early exit from the Covid recession is that we may be heading for an inflation-sparked recession two years later, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Our Current Predicament (ep. 84)” – Listen to the Bournbrook podcast, where they are joined by author and columnist Jamie Walden to discuss two years of Covid and the impact of lockdown and hysteria on the British public.
• “South Africa To Enter Permanent Covid Security State” – At a time when countries are easing restrictions, South Africa has not only extended the official state of disaster but is introducing a new law to make permanent the provisions for masking, social distancing, quarantining and vaccine passports, writes Chris Waldburger.
• “The Worship of Zero” – To impose a centrally dictated objective, and a unidimensional one to boot, on complex societies comprised of billions of individuals with extremely diverse preferences and capabilities is to wage war on human nature, writes Craig Pirrong at the Brownstone Institute.
• “Famed Bangladesh Mask Study Excluded Crucial Data” – James D. Agresti on Just Facts Daily says some of the Bangladesh mask study authors claimed it proves that mask mandates “could save thousands of lives each day globally and hundreds each day in the United States”, but in reality they altered their study to exclude the data that could prove or disprove that claim.
• “Pfizer Hired 600 Employees Due to ‘Large Increase of Adverse Event Reports’: Document” – The Epoch Times reports that Pfizer hired 600 employees in the months after its COVID-19 vaccine was authorised in the United States due to the “large increase” of reports of side effects linked to the vaccine, according to a document prepared by the company.
• “Spare Easter motorists misery by issuing national injunction on oil protesters, say Labour” – The Attorney General is exploring legal injunctions to halt Just Stop Oil as Essex Police laments protests that have cost “in excess of £1 million”, the Telegraph reports.
• “Sweden’s inconvenient Covid victory” – Were millions of people denied their freedom for nothing, asks Johan Anderberg in UnHerd.
• “On scepticism about COVID-19 vaccines – II” – The mass vaccination campaign was a Government failure, argues Manuel Oñate on Stupid Economics.
• “New Study: Arctic Was Much Warmer 6000 Years Ago… 90% Of Glaciers, Ice Caps Smaller Than Present Or Absent!” – Climate alarmists hate this inconvenient fact: hundreds of temperature reconstructions show that the northern hemisphere was much warmer over much of the past 10,000 years than it is today, says Pierre Gosselin on the No Tricks Zone.
• “Elon Musk will no longer join Twitter’s board” – The social network chief says Tesla billionaire’s decision is “for the best”; it also leaves the door open for Musk to increase his shares in the company, reports the Telegraph.
• “Ridding Twitter of its Left-wing bias could be Elon Musk’s finest achievement” – Battle for control of the social media site is shaping up as the most fascinating corporate story of the year, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “Stop pretending David Amess’ murder was caused by online abuse” – Why did politicians and the press push this line, asks Henry Hill in UnHerd.
• “When libel laws are needed” – Smear campaigns are not protected by free speech, argues Andrew Doyle in UnHerd.
• “Stopping the next Hunter Biden laptop cover-up” – More than 50 former senior intelligence officials signed a letter in 2020 claiming the Hunter Biden laptop emails “have all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”, but now that letter has been shown to be “a lie, a fabrication, made-up, fake stuff designed to influence an election”, writes Peter Van Buren in the Spectator.

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