- “Why is Boris talking down Britain’s vaccine success again?” – Kate Andrews responds in the Spectator to Boris Johnson’s comments yesterday, giving lockdown the credit for Britain’s drop in Covid infections
- “Boris Johnson needs a lesson in communication” – “There was once a time when medical and scientific communication was undertaken in a measured, restrained way, with statements caveated accordingly,” writes Amy Jones (the pseudonym of an NHS doctor) in UnHerd, but “this seems to have been discarded in the age of Covid”
- “‘Prophet of doom’ experts warn easing lockdown restrictions may delay route to freedom” – Another day, and MailOnline reports another warning about the waves of infection that are heading towards us as restrictions are eased
- “4.6m people missed out on hospital treatment in England in 2020” – The Guardian reports on the huge numbers of people who missed out on NHS treatment last year, many of whom have turned to crowdfunding to finance private medical care
- “I can’t celebrate this token return of freedom” – “The photographs plastered over the newspapers do not depict carefree trips to the pub,” says Ross Clark in the Telegraph. “They are highly-controlled episodes of state-sanctioned fun, with serious conditions attached”
- “Older drinkers risk discrimination says charity, after pub refuses to serve man without smartphone” – Older folk who don’t use smartphones are being denied service at some pubs and restaurants who have made ordering via an app mandatory, the Telegraph reports
- “Only two in five pubs in England reopen” – Less than half of England’s pubs were able to reopen on Monday, according to the BBC, and none is expecting to turn much of a profit from trading outdoors only
- “Why do I need to shield if I’ve had the vaccine?” – The question asked by an 82 year-old Scottish Grandmother who, according to MailOnline, was fined £60 for attending a seven-person 70th birthday party. Every person there was fully vaccinated
- “Police apologise for halting church service on Good Friday” – Police officers visited Christ the King Polish Church in Balham, London on Sunday to apologise for halting a Good Friday service, Christian Today reports
- “Frederick Forsyth, why have you let us down?” – Frederick Forsyth has been sound on all everything to do with Covid from the beginning, writes Gary Oliver in the Conservative Woman, so it was “surprising and disappointing” to see him go wobbly on vaccine passports
- “How they’re ‘nudging’ us into tyranny” – “We the public are being played, or ‘nudged’, into this tyranny” by specialists who use confusing and misleading terminology, says Mark Pickles in the Conservative Woman
- “Sickening Lies” – “The fact that Johnson has said something is always a good start in identifying that it must be a lie,” says Alistair Cavendish “but these latest comments about lockdown must be denounced as widely as possible for the poisonous rubbish they are”
- “British veterans need to speak up about lockdowns” – “After a year of the civil liberties and ideals that I and my peers joined the British Army to protect being crushed, it’s time for British veterans to speak out,” writes James Jeffrey in the American Conservative
- “Lockdown legacy facing future generations” – In the latest episode of the Pandemic Podcast, Dan Astin Gregory speaks to Dr Rob Verkerk of the Alliance for Natural Health about the potential long term impact of the year of fear
- “AstraZeneca: Irish health body recommends vaccine restriction” – The Irish health regulator has said the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be given to people over the age of 60, the BBC reports
- “Masks for children, Muzzles for COVID-19 news” – YouTube censorship of Ron De Santis’s COVID-19 roundtable discussion “violates basic standards of scientific conduct” and “runs contrary to American norms of free expression”, writes Professor Jay Bhattacharya in the Wall Street Journal
- “The free world died of COVID-19” – “The Covid era has exposed that these values that supposedly united the West are nothing more than a facade,” says Jordan Schachtel in AIER
- “On vaccine passports and the interpretation of reality” – Donald J. Boudreaux writes for AIER on how he and his friends and acquaintances are interpreting the Covid world very differently. “Where other people see a dream, I see a nightmare”
- “Johnson & Johnson vaccinations halt across country after rare clotting cases emerge” – The New York Times reports that the Johnson & Johnson Jab is ‘paused’ after six recipients went on to develop blood clots, one of which proved fatal
- “Australia won’t buy Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose Covid vaccine due to AstraZeneca similarities” – The Australian Government will not be buying the Johnson & Johnson jab, the Guardian reports. A spokesman explained that it “is an adenovirus vaccine, the same type of vaccine as the AstraZeneca vaccine”
- “International borders might not open even if whole country is vaccinated” – Australia’s health minister Greg Hunt has refused to guarantee that the country’s borders will reopen, even if the whole island is vaccinated, as they still have to look at “transmission, longevity [of vaccine protection] and the global impact”, the Sydney Morning Herald reports
- “The Covid dissidents taking on China” – Ian Birrell in UnHerd heralds the work of ‘Drastic’, an “informal guerrilla group of internet sleuths, scientists and data experts” in unmasking Beijing’s science stooges
- “Is Boris preparing us for lockdown four?” – The Prime Minister’s defence of lockdown makes Dr Clare Craig “really nervous about what’s coming next”
By Jonathan Barr / 14 April 2021 • 03.08
