News Round-Up

• “Call or nothing: NHS will tell patients to accept a ‘virtual’ appointment on Zoom or by phone or face longer waits in fresh bid to chop down backlogs” – NHS bosses say the use of controversial phone and video consultations will become much more common as part of a push to clear waits of more than 18 months by next April, reports the Mail.
• “‘This is not Covid 2.0’: Scientists calm fears about new Langya virus detected in China that first jumped to humans in 2018 and is infecting just a handful of people a year” – Langya henipavirus (or LayV) was detected in 35 people in the country’s eastern Henan and Shandong provinces between December 2018 and mid 2021, reports the Mail.
• “Polio vaccine will be offered to all under-nines in London after virus found in sewers” – Polio has been detected 116 times in 19 sewage samples across London this year, the Telegraph reports.
• “Monkeypox vaccines set to run out in U.K. with bookings in some areas already closing” – While the latest data suggests the monkeypox outbreak is slowing across the country, new cases are being reported every day, and it has been labelled as a “global health emergency”, reports Sky News.
• “‘Please uninstall COVIDSafe’: App branded a failure and deleted” – Costing $21 million and detecting only two unique cases over two years, the controversial Australian app has now been decommissioned, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
• “‘We Have a Corrupt Medical System in This Country’: Sen. Ron Johnson” – The Epoch Times reports that Johnson said that the U.S. medical system is corrupted by money from powerful entities like Big Pharma.
• “The Kite Runner: Broadway show first to adopt mask-only nights” – BBC News reports “The Kite Runner” will host special performances for theatre-goers who want to wear masks. We’ll see how popular those are.
• “Stop telling us to snitch” – Laura Dodsworth writes that authorities have become too accustomed to pulling the stigma, shaming and snitching levers.
• “Lauterbach Mask Meltdown Continues” – Eugyppius continues his coverage of “Germany’s increasingly disturbed Health Minister” who has announced plans for a new vaccine pass colour scheme.
• “NHS cyber attack could leave staff without patient records ‘for three weeks’” – Health officials warn of prolonged disruption to medics accessing medical notes following the crippling security breach, the Telegraph reports.
• “Dr. Deborah Birx – who helped shape the U.S. response to Covid – doesn’t understand basic epidemiology or how clinical trials work” – Alex Berenson on the shortcomings of Dr. Birx.
• “Welcome to the Hotez gain of function” – El Gato Malo takes a closer look at the role of Peter Hotez in running gain of function research but claiming it’s an anti-science conspiracy theory to suggest such research could produce SARS-CoV-2.
• “Drakeford has turned Wales into a laboratory for terrible ideas” – Kara Kennedy in the Telegraph writes that with lockdown restrictions, trans ideology and excessive speed limits, the principality’s devolved Government can be counted on to get things wrong.
• “The Demonisation of Dissent” – Molly Kingsley writes for Brownstone that “denouncing parents who raise reasonable questions and challenges about risk/benefit for their children as heretic anti-vaxxers, as the public health machine in the U.S. and U.K. has done repeatedly, is proving self-defeating”.
• “The Disastrous High-Tech War on a Pathogen” – W. Aaron Vandiver writes for Brownstone that the pandemic has been wrongly conceived as a “world war” against COVID-19, in which each tactic and high-tech ‘weapon’ has “harmed human health, destabilised civil society, and possibly disrupted the ecological balance between the human population and the virus, while enriching private interests and empowering financially captured government regulators”.
• “Is cash back?” – Despite the best efforts of the anti-cash lobby, cash is making something of a comeback during the downturn, says Ross Clark in the Speccie.
• “Ep.50 In Liz We Trust?” – The Real Normal Podcast is back with a brand new contributor, John Syfret. The boys talk the “boring Tory leadership election race, plus world economic issues, FUEU, Russia and our fave TV, books and stories from the last… erm… few months”.
• “Star Marine Ecologist Committed Misconduct, University Says” – Rare consequences for flawed and false alarmist research, reported in WUWT.
• “Models, Climate Scientists Wrong Again… New Study Finds Jet Stream Strengthening, Not Weakening” – Pierre Gosselin in WUWT reports on a new study that found the winter jet stream over the North Atlantic and Eurasia has increased in average speed by 8% to 132 mph.
• “Lord Frost goes cold on Net Zero” – TCW Defending Freedom reports on David Frost’s paper for think-tank Policy Exchange, in which he says current evidence does not show we are facing a climate emergency and the Government needs to stop “hectoring” people to make sacrifices to save the planet.
• “Why We Create The Apocalypse We Fear” – Michael Shellenberger’s fascinating conversation with the Wall Street Journal‘s Gerard Baker.
• “Retreat of Christianity has given way to ‘censorious and authoritarian’ secular public morality” – Christian Today reports on Toby’s interview with the Christian Institute, where he said the decline of Christianity has been replaced by a woke secular public morality that is leading to the cancellation of orthodox Christians and others who dare to challenge it.
• “‘The police are now the paramilitary wing of the trans lobby’” – Brendan O’Neill in Spiked interviews ex-copper Harry Miller on the great awokening of the British constabulary.
• “Universities admit purge of ‘challenging’ books to protect students” – An investigation reported in the Telegraph finds that institutions are dropping books containing depictions of suicide and slavery from syllabuses.
• “Are students really too fragile to read William Shakespeare?” – Tom Slater in the Spectator says trigger warnings on supposedly controversial books undermine the purpose of universities.
• “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is tearing academia apart” – Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in American academia, with ‘diversity statements’ and ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) criteria being imposed on faculty existing and prospective alike, writes John Sailer in UnHerd.
• “Education watchdog criticised for promoting ‘anti-British’ charity to universities” – The Office for Students has come under fire for referring institutions to Advance HE which has been accused of “egregious wokery”, the Telegraph reports.
• “Ex-mandarin with ‘no economic experience’ misses out on Bank of England job after backlash” – Dame Clare Moriarty is not on a list of appointments after criticism of the Treasury’s focus on “ideology not ability”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Another ‘Then and Now’ cartoon inspired by the brilliant @LD_Sceptics article ‘There is No Food Crisis – If Only We Stopped Burning it as ‘Green’ Biofuel’” – Josh is inspired by a recent Daily Sceptic article to produce another hilarious cartoon.

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