News Round-Up

• “Boris Johnson insists Covid lockdown decisions were ‘right’” – Boris told reporters that the purpose of the restrictions was to “reduce the huge numbers in the NHS”, according to MailOnline, and he insisted that he is “very confident” that the decisions made were the “right ones”
• “Moderna suing Pfizer over Covid vaccine technology” – Moderna is suing Pfizer in both the U.S. and Germany for patent infringement linked to the jabs, reports the BBC
• “Covid vaccine mastermind Dame Kate Bingham’s virus warning” – MailOnline reports that former vaccine tsar Kate Bingham has accused the Civil Service of “taking their foot off the gas” as they are relying on the existing jabs, rather than searching for new ones for the next variants
• “More evidence – as if it were needed – that ministers terrified the public into complying with lockdown” – Rishi Sunak has admitted that the British public was deliberately “scared witless” by the Government. “It’s a case of better late than never,” says State of Fear author Laura Dodsworth in CAPX
• “Sunak’s belated Covid confessions: A shocking indictment of a man without a moral compass” – “It does not bear thinking about,” writes Kathy Gyngell at the Conservative Woman, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer “sat on his hands knowing that the policy he supported in public was ruinous”
• “D.C. Mayor Says No Virtual Learning, Giving Unvaccinated Black Teens Zero Alternative Options” – Washington D.C. has a mandate requiring students aged 12 and over to be jabbed in order to go to school, the Daily Signal reports. And remote learning is not on offer
• “Mayor Bowser’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for D.C. employees is unlawful, judge rules” – According to Fox News, a  D.C. Superior Court judge has ruled that Mayor Muriel Bowser’s coronavirus vaccination mandate for District Government employees is unlawful
• “Trump sought to pressure FDA on Covid vaccines” – A congressional panel probing the pandemic response has found evidence that Trump stalled the FDA’s plan to extend safety studies of the Covid vaccines, reports the Washington Post. Is Trump set up to be the fall guy when the public turns on the vaccines?
• “Pfizer’s Paxlovid Covid Pill Showed No Measurable Benefit in Adults 40 to 65: Study” – A new study has found that Pfizer’s COVID-19 oral antiviral pill Paxlovid appears to provide little or no benefit for younger adults, the Epoch Times reports
• “A Thousand Days to Flatten the Curve” – Eugyppius laments the news that Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the German cabinet have signed off the final draft of the Infection Protection Act. It would see the poor benighted country having to mask up from October to April
• “‘Double standards’: Why top German ministers are embroiled in a Covid mask row” – A row has broken out after Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Energy Minister Robert Habeck were seen flying without masks on a recent trip to Canada, the Local reports
• “Tossing the Elf Out With the Chump Change” – Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the guest on the latest episode of the Ricochet Podcast where he gives Dr. Fauci his final grade
• “Fauci’s Covid Disaster: A Summary” – Over at the Brownstone Institute, Ian Miller revisits some of the “greatest hits of Fauci’s reign of incompetence”
• “What I Heard and Saw: Dr. Paul Alexander Speaks” – The Brownstone Institute’s Jeffrey A. Tucker interviews Dr. Paul Elias Alexander, who witnessed the chaos of the U.S. policy response to Covid first hand
• “Novak Djokovic’s vaccine ban is a disgrace to American sport” – “The greatest tennis player of all time, Novak Djokovic, is once again being victimised by pandemic-era stupidity,” writes Park MacDougald in UnHerd
• “Three-day wait for surgery after dog attack sign of a system in crisis” – A man’s 72-hour wait for surgery after a dog attack is emblematic of the crisis in the health service in Victoria, Australia, where, according to the Age, they are treating people in tents because the hospitals are full
• “Who will argue against the planet?” – “Climate change dogma always ignores the good news,” writes Maurice Newman in Spectator Australia
• “Lockdown and the price of suppressing dissent” – “We are standing in the smouldering wreckage of our elites’ terrible decisions,” say Fraser Myers at Spiked. “We have paid a heavy price indeed for suppressing debate and dissent”
• “Facebook just forced me to delete a post from a year ago!” – Steve Kirsch takes aim at Facebook, the “compliant speech” platform which has just censored a post he put up a year ago, showing data about vaccine injuries
• “‘The young can’t force their ideology on me’: how cancelled choreographer Rosie Kay is fighting back” – Rosie Kay was forced to resign from her own dance company after she was accused of transphobia, the Telegraph reports. But she has now launched a new company where she hopes to create “a safe space” where artists can work “without fear of being silenced, shut down or cancelled”
• “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans” – Nature Human Behaviour explains why it has developed some woke guidance aimed at protecting people who may be harmed by the publication of scientific research that is inadvertently “discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic”
• “Civil servants attend ‘Queer Leadership’ conference on taxpayer cash” – Civil servants in the Legal Department have come under fire for attending a ‘Queer Leadership’ conference, says MailOnline, despite Suella Braverman’s fightback against diversity training
• “We need a British solution to the global energy crisis” – “More domestic fuel is crucial to any plan to make available more and more affordable power,” argues John Redwood MP in the Telegraph
• “Thatcher still holds the key to fixing Britain” – “Individualism, freedom, the right to act and speak as you wish,” are more important than ever, says David Frost in the Telegraph. “That is why Lady Thatcher’s politics are still relevant in today’s Britain”
• “By pumping more oil, can Venezuela hope for a better future?” – Writing in Scaled, Ciarán McCollum looks at how the energy crisis in the West may turn out to be an opportunity for Venezuela
• “How governments and the cult of net zero wrecked the energy market” – “Putin may be the proximate cause of this crisis, but the reason we were vulnerable was an intentional policy to crush fossil fuel investment,” writes Juliet Samuel in the Telegraph
• “Nadhim Zahawi warns families they will have to save energy” – “The reality is that we should all look at our energy consumption,” Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has said, according to MailOnline. “There is war on our continent”
• “Restore Trust in the National Trust” – Restore Trust Director Zewditu Gebreyohanes tells the New Culture Forum’s Peter Whittle why she wants disaffected ex-members of the National Trust to rejoin and vote for change

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