News Round-Up

• “Daily U.K. Covid cases plummet 31% in a week and hospital admissions drop 13% but deaths creep up – as ONS confirms latest wave has peaked” – U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) bosses logged another 32,608 positive tests over the last 24 hours, down 30.8% in a week, reports the Mail.
• “England has left Covid behind” – But other countries are not so lucky, says Alex Story in the Critic.
• “Smiling U.S. health chief shrugs off her Covid blunders” – A year ago CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky claimed, “Vaccinated people do not carry the virus… and do not get sick,” triggering the censorship and cancellation of those who pointed to the data and argued otherwise. Now, she smiles, shrugs and dismisses the costly error with a “science is grey”. Where is the accountability, asks James Rogers in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “Fluvoxamine for Outpatient Management of COVID-19 to Prevent Hospitalisation” – A systematic review and meta-analysis in JAMA of clinical trial evidence for fluvoxamine to prevent hospitalisation of patients with COVID-19 finds it is effective.
• “These people deserve the credit for the deaths of nearly a million Americans” – Steve Kirsch pulls no punches as he lambasts the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines committee for failing to approve safe, repurposed medicines which have shown effectiveness against COVID-19.
• “Cops pin down Shanghai locals as homes are turned into Covid hubs” – Shanghai cops and health officials pinned down residents as they fought attempts to turn their homes into quarantine hubs. Videos circulated on Weibo before being deleted show scuffles, according to the Mail.
• “Inside the simmering rage of Shanghai’s locked down residents” – Deciphering the mood of Shanghai’s locked-down residents demands filtering through an ocean of outrage, frustration and despair about their lives stuck in limbo, reports the South China Morning Post.
• “Is Covid madness on the wane because we are bored with it?” – Has the population moved on, asks Paul Collits in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “First year of Covid pandemic did not trigger baby boom” – Locking down couples and forcing them to work from home in 2020 did not encourage them to conceive a child, pregnancy data from 2020 for England and Wales suggest, according to the Mail. It seems scaring the population witless about a ‘deadly’ disease and creating massive economic uncertainty doesn’t encourage them to procreate.
• “The billionaire prince who is trying to block Musk from buying Twitter” – The Saudi Arabian royal, who is a major shareholder in the tech giant, rejected the $41billion floated by the Tesla billionaire today, the Mail reports.
• “Averting Our Eyes” – The New York subway massacre has roots in mental illness, but the shooter’s delusions were likely fed by the relentless cultivation of racial resentment, says Heather Mac Donald in City Journal.
• “Game of empires” – As hysteria moves on from Covid to Ukraine, Ramesh Thakur in Spectator Australia looks at alternative framings of the Ukraine war.
• “The rise of the liberal groomer” – As the battle for control of education of the young intensifies, not every desire deserves to be empowered, says Mary Harrington in UnHerd.
• “Online Safety Bill ‘risks most draconian internet censorship in the Western world’” – The Christian Institute warns MPs that the Government’s Online Safety Bill needs radical amendments to prevent it from trampling on free speech.
• “Teachers clash over trans rights policy as union members say ‘women who want to have single-sex spaces shouldn’t be labelled terfs’” – The discussion took place at the National Education Union (NEU) conference in Bournemouth Thursday afternoon, amid calls for the Government ban on conversion therapy to apply to all LGBT people, reports the Mail.
• “Cambridge College spent £120,000 trying to remove Tobias Rustat plaque in slavery row” – But the ecclesiastical court rejected Jesus College’s “false narrative” about Rustat’s links to slavery, reports the Mail.
• “WHO boss says Ukraine war shows lack of equal attention to black lives” – Mail report that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus claimed other crises such as in his home country of Ethiopia do not receive the same concern as Putin’s war which has had major geopolitical consequences. Might be the nukes, Tedros. And the gas.
• “The NHS is using Covid to push for more restrictions” – You would be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu this morning, as Matthew Taylor, CEO of the NHS Confederation once again described his frustration with the Government’s ‘Living with Covid’ plan, says Amy Jones in UnHerd.

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