News Round Up

• “Unopposed: why is Keir Starmer making life so easy for the PM?” – There’ll be a vote in Parliament next week on whether lockdown powers should be extended for another three months and Sir Kier Starmer is not likely to offer any opposition at all, writes James Forsyth in the Spectator
• “The myth of our ‘late’ lockdown” – Boris Johnson is said to believe he made a mistake in not locking down earlier and harder. But there is no clear evidence that Britain suffered for it, says Professor David Paton in Spiked
• “Concern over ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions during pandemic” – A BBC report on the Care Quality Commission finding that there 500 ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions made without consulting families
• “I found chilling Do Not Resuscitate note hidden in my darling’s medical records” – In the Daily Mail, Sue Reid tells how she found a ‘do not resuscitate’ note among her partner’s medical records, which said that the patient had capacity to discuss it but had not been consulted
• “The ‘do not resuscitate’ scandal must be addressed at the very top” – Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt calls for high-level action on the scandal
• “How care homes paid the price for Covid as ministers scrambled to save the NHS at any cost” – Care home residents paid a big price to “protect our NHS”, the Telegraph reports
• “Return of schools encourages more workers back to the office” – Offices are filling up again, according to the Times
• “Lockdown has fostered a ‘shadow pandemic’ of violence against women” – Isolation with abusers, restrictions upon movement and deserted public spaces are conditions in which violence against women thrives, Madeleine Armstrong points out in the Critic
• “The rout of the Covid conspiracy theorists” – People are not buying into theories about 5G and Bill Gates, according to James Bloodworth in CAPX. But the so-called conspiracy theorists may yet be proved right about the pandemic originating with a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology
• “Vaccines more effective on Brazilian coronavirus variant than thought, study reveals” – The Times reports on a study that suggest the vaccines are effective against the Brazilian variant
• “Emily Maitlis’s three Major Takeaways From The Pandemic” – At a Forces for Change event, the Newsnight presenter shared her perspectives on lockdowns, Vogue reports. One key takeaway: “We are not all in it together.” For the wealthier classes “it was a totally different experience and probably quite a lovely experience”
• “How celebrities became irrelevant” – By overexposing the rich and famous, lockdown has robbed them of influence, says Kat Rosenfield at UnHerd. One positive then
• “Eurostar in talks to head off cash crunch, warns majority shareholder” – The FT reports that a drop in passenger numbers has left Eurostar short of cash and seeking a government bail-out
• “Negative impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown in people living with severe and complex obesity in the UK” – A study published in the Lancet finds that lockdown badly affected the health habits and mental wellbeing of fat people
• “SNP censorship and lockdown’s legal limits – The Week in 60 Minutes with Andrew Neil” – The latest episode of Spectator TV includes an interview with Jonathan Sumption about the Government’s approach to easing lockdown
• “James and Laura’s Chinwag #16” – James Delingpole and Laura Perrins give it both barrels on the subject of the lockdown and Boris Johnson’s useless regime. Didn’t they say that last week?
• “Europe’s reckless caution over AstraZeneca” – “EU leaders keep dis­crediting AstraZeneca to deflect attention from their own mistakes,” writes Wolfgang Münchau in the Spectator
• “EU has blocked UK’s vaccine over embarrassment of its own rollout” – “Von der Leyen to block exports of the Pfizer vaccine to Britain should come as no surprise,” says Ross Clark in the Express
• “France imposes Paris lockdown in face of third Covid wave and sluggish vaccination” – Faced with a third wave of infections, Paris and parts of Northern and Southern France are heading into a four-week lockdown, the Telegraph reports
• “Norwegian experts conclude ‘strong immune response’ from AstraZeneca vaccine linked to blood clots” – The Local reports the finding of a group of Norwegian medical experts that blood clots are the result of a strong immune reaction triggered by the vaccine
• “Only ending lockdowns can stimulate the economy” – Fiscal spending and monetary expansion are not any use while lockdown restrictions remain, says Thomas L. Hogan at AIER
• “Can private businesses legally and morally force customers to wear masks?“– Writing for AIER, Robert E. Wright suggests businesses initiate masked and maskless hours or locations and allow customers and employees to take their pick
• “Stop the cartoonish excuses for Covid restrictions” – There is no right to be free of the risk of exposure to pathogens carried by asymptomatic individuals, Donald J. Boudreaux argues at AIER. Economists should stop pretending otherwise
• “Massachusetts bans dancing like it’s 1684” – Jeffrey A. Tucker looks at some retrograde rules on dancing which currently apply in Massachusetts for AIER
• “John Magufuli: Tanzania’s president dies aged 61 after Covid rumours” – The BBC reports the death of Tanzania’s Covid-sceptic president John Magufuli. Rumours that he contracted COVID-19 have not been confirmed. If so, it’s egg on face for Lockdown Sceptics. This site hailed him as an unlikely hero of the pandemic for refusing to lockdown
• “Is Britain Becoming a Police State?” – After a relentless 12-month clampdown on our freedoms, UnlockedTV asks if there is a way back, with Toby among others

Stop Press: Jonny Peppiatt, a regular contributor to Lockdown Sceptics, has written a book, Frustrations of a Sceptic, that’s now available on Amazon, both as an ebook and in paperback and includes some of his pieces for this site.

The 12 months from 19th March 2020 saw the collapse of sanity, the war against science (which, unfortunately, science lost), the loss of my life in London, the loss of friends over the war on science, and the most severe depression I’d experienced since my school years.

This book is a collection of pieces written in these 12 months. The first half is made up of musings on depression and anxiety. The second half is made up of articles, poems, and some slightly sillier pieces, including 11 of my pieces published in Lockdown Sceptics, outlining all the many, many reasons why I believe that the lockdowns have been such a catastrophic mistake.

Jonny is between jobs so please support him by buying a copy of his book. Only £4.99 on Kindle.