- “Third COVID-19 wave this winter ‘is more likely to be a ripple” – Professor Tim Spector tells the Times that “Boris Johnson’s warnings of a third wave are designed ‘to keep the population fearful'”. It is, he reckons, “more likely to be a ripple”
- “Rishi Sunak exclusive: ‘Workers could quit if forced to stay at home’”– The Chancellor is urging businesses to bring workers back to the office, the Telegraph reports
- “Return of track and trace creates ‘many more problems’” – Asking customers to sign in when they enter pubs and restaurants is set to resume on April 12th, when the hospitality trade begins to reopen, and all customers will have to sign in, not just the lead booker, and the rule will apply to outdoor customers as well, including beer gardens and pavements
- “40,600 people likely caught Covid while hospital inpatients in England” – One in seven people treated for COVID-19 between August 1st 2020 and March 21st 2021 were infected while in hospital, according to the Guardian
- “Are we ready for Britain’s looming cancer crisis?” – Professor Karol Sikora sounds a warning about the crisis of delayed cancer diagnoses and treatment in the Spectator
- “Blood, Sweat and Beers: Pubs could ask boozers for blood test to prove Covid immunity to get a pint” – The Sun reports on an idea that only a public health expert would consider sound
- “Does the data support renewing Covid emergency powers?” – Kate Andrews takes a look at the key data from the Spectator‘s Data Hub. Infections, hospitalisations and deaths are all down and over half the UK’s adult population have been vaccinated
- “Scottish Covid adviser’s vaccine confusion” – Steerpike recounts how Scottish public health advisor Devi Sridhar went off script, claiming, on limited evidence, that the AstraZeneca vaccine doesn’t work against the South African variant
- “Trial set to start of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine as nasal spray” – Oxford University is starting a trial for a vaccine, developed with AstraZeneca, which is described as a nasal spray, the Financial Times reports
- “Why we must never lockdown [sic] again” – Gary Sidley gives four key reasons why lockdown policies must be consigned to the “skeleton cupboard labelled ‘Cataclysmic Government blunders never to be repeated'”
- “A sketch of the week” – Bournbrook Magazine looks back at the week gone by, with illustrations by their new cartoonist Crid
- “Hong Kong flu and Covid: How ‘no lockdown’ Harold Wilson proved to be a better PM than Boris Johnson” – A historical perspective from Neil Clark in Sputnik News. “Rather than seeking to terrify the public about the threats of the Hong Kong Flu, Wilson’s Government saw its job as trying to reassure people”
- “A dark day for democracy” – Michael Curzon reflects on the extension of the Coronavirus Act for the Conservative Woman, and praises the 76 MPs who voted ‘No’
- “Vaccine passports to visit the pub? Sense, gentlemen, please” – “If this measure is introduced,” writes Michael Fahey in the Conservative Woman, “I hope the pub/restaurant/hospitality trade kick it to the kerb and at the next election, I hope the electorate boots this authoritarian Government into oblivion”
- “Lockdown – the Big Lie that will never end” – “There can no longer be any doubt that the position in Britain and elsewhere has nothing to do with any medical emergency, and probably never did,” writes Daniel Miller at the Conservative Woman
- “Weekly summary of Yellow Card reporting” – As of March 14th 2021, 38,084 Yellow Cards had been reported for the Pfizer jab (10.9 million first doses administered) and 78,223 for the AstraZeneca jab (13.7 million first doses)
- “Is Covid racist?” – Of course a virus can’t be racist, but some ethnic communities have reportedly suffered higher infection rates than others. Calvin Robinson, Kawsar Zaman and Nikita Malik discuss why in this broadcast from Bright Blue TV
- “Matt Hancock grilled by Tory MPs over Vaccine effects data” – In an exchange in Parliament, Hancock was asked if the NHS has data on how many people have died from Covid in NHS hospitals three weeks after receiving their first dose of the Covid vaccine. He struggled to answer
- “Escape from Lockdown” – In the latest episode of Escape from Lockdown, Alex speaks to barrister Francis Hoar about his courtroom battles against lockdown
- “Lockdown forever” – The latest Spiked podcast asks if we have let our freedoms slip away for good
- “Germany’s third wave could be ‘worse’ than last two” – The German Government is starting to panic, Deutsche Welle reports, with the head of the public health body warning of 100,000 cases per day
- “We are witnessing the end of the German Miracle” – Sherelle Jacobs says that Angela Merkel’s final hour has become her lousiest moment in her Telegraph column
- “Sweden: more freedom, less death” – Sweden famously avoided strict lockdowns, Spiked notes, and it also experienced a smaller increase in overall mortality last year than most of its European neighbours
- “Sweden: The head of the Public Health Agency says ‘We have got it right” – Johan Carlson, Director-General of the Swedish Public Health Agency, told a parliamentary hearing that “there were those who thought that you could get the infection out completely by shutting down society”
- “Trump says he ‘didn’t really listen’ to Dr. Fauci on COVID-19, blasts him as ‘self-promoter’” – RT reports that President Trump was not too impressed by Dr. Fauci
- “Nation’s first ‘vaccine passport’ coming to New York” – Vaccine passports are coming to the Big Apple, the New York Post reports. Dubbed the ‘Excelsior Pass’, it was launched yesterday and Madison Square Garden will be using it from next week
- “Homicides are way up in 2020, and Covid Lockdowns are a likely cause” – The US homicide rate in 2020 was the highest in 15 years, according to Ryan McMaken on the Mises Wire. The connection between lockdown and violent behaviour is, he says, “openly admitted”
- “Why is everyone in Texas not dying?” – Writing for AIER, Jeffrey A. Tucker takes a look back at the fear-mongering predictions that were made when Texas ended its lockdown. He is he says “sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by mask-less people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal”
- “Weeks After Texas Reopened, Health Experts Look for Impact” – The Wall St Journal makes the same point, noting that the state hasn’t seen rise in cases two weeks after businesses fully reopened
- “Ivor Cummins Answers Forbidden Covid Questions” – The sceptical number cruncher appears on the Tom Woods Show
- “Children Under 12 Begin Getting Vaccinated in Pfizer Trials” – The Wall St Journal reports that Pfizer has started to test its Covid-19 vaccine in children ages six months to 11 years old
- “Islamic charity ‘put Batley cartoon row teacher in danger’ by outing him” – Camilla Turner in the Telegraph reports on the Free Speech Union’s letter to the Charity Commission complaining about the Purpose of Life, a Muslim charity that doxxed the teacher at the centre of the Batley Grammar School row
- “Ben Habib, co-founder of Unlocked, agrees with Mike Graham that Boris Johnson should be replaced” – He is not impressed by Boris Johnson!
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Prof Tim Spector
‘third wave this winter more likely to be a ripple’
Perfectly obvious since Covid revealed itself to be just another Coronovirus that comes and goes each year with varying severity depending, in part, on how much low hanging fruit is left over from the previous year.
This has been clear for almost a year and as Sir Desmond Swayne rightly said yesterday in Parliament
‘By any measure the emergency is over’.
For clarification, by ’emergency’, the legend that is Sir Desmond Swayne was no doubt referring to the infamous hospital clearances of March 2020:
‘Via its Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the government in mid-March adopted a policy, executed by NHS England and NHS Improvement, that led to 25,000 patients, including those infected or possibly infected with COVID-19 who had not been tested, being discharged from hospital into care homes between 17 March and 15 April—exponentially increasing the risk of transmission to the very population most at risk of severe illness and death from the disease. With no access to testing, severe shortages of PPE, insufficient staff, and limited guidance, care homes were overwhelmed.’
‘Between 2 March and 12 June 2020, 18,562 residents of care homes in England died with COVID-19, including 18,168 people aged 65 and over, representing almost 40% of all deaths involving COVID-19 in England during this period. Of these deaths, 13,844 (76%) happened in care homes themselves; nearly all of the remainder occurred in a hospital. During the same period, 28,186 “excess deaths” were recorded in care homes in England, representing a 46% increase compared with the same period in previous years.’
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2020-10/Care%20Homes%20Report.pdf?kd5Z8eWzj8Q6ryzHkcaUnxfCtqe5Ddg6=
You may well be correct but as a slogan for our cause
‘By any measure the emergency is over’
rings very true.
It’s a great slogan from a terrific M.P., of course, but, given that overall all cause mortality for 2020 was middling in a thirty year context, it is a bit of a struggle to find any ’emergency’ at all….but Amnesty International found one that is particularly grave for all those involved in decision making in March 2020.
It has the advantage of not telling people they have been completely taken for a ride, which many would find difficult to accept.
Some really good stuff here:
‘Harold Wilson was a better Prime Minister than Mr Johnson’
What an indictment…..deadly accurate……
‘Why is everyone in Texas not dying?’
Brilliant! The good old U.S.A., those 17 States that comprise the remnants of the Free World, are leading the world out of its complete weird out.
‘Lockdowns do not eliminate the virus, they merely shift the burden onto the working class.
Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They might all echo the words of Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
Nails it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRfiwIhG4gU
DM today: Weddings back but you may NOT kiss the bride!!!!!!!!
DERRRRRRR????
98% of couples have been living together for varying amounts of years.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more stupid.
You said it!!!
Every cloud has a silver lining. My wife decided we should treat a friend of hers (of nearly 50 years standing) to a birthday lunch. This would entail a 140 mile round trip for a mediocre Garden Centre lunch with a woman I find self opinionated and aggravating. Fortunately having heard we haven’t been jabbed she has informed us we can’t buy her lunch! That’s what I call a result!
It’s an ill wind,etc.