- “Britain to be Covid-free by August, says vaccine taskforce chief” – In an interview in the Telegraph, Clive Dix says that “sometime in August, we will have no circulating virus in the UK”
- “Data, not dates: there is no reason to delay a return to normal life” – The Spectator’s leading article asks “is there anything in the data that makes it inappropriate to bring reopening forwards, given the economic and societal harm the restrictions still inflict”?
- “Indian Covid variant is now officially ‘of concern’ and is ‘at least’ as infectious as dominant Kent type” – Cases of the variant, now labelled “of concern”, have more than doubled in a week, MailOnline reports, and the Prime Minister has said that tracking it will be “absolutely ruthless”
- “House of Commons to end Zoom debates and remote voting on June 21st” – MPs will be heading back to the office on June 21st, according to the Times. They’ll be permitted to sit next to each other but may be told to wear masks and not to shout or heckle
- “Covid vaccines for children should not get emergency use authorisation” – “One might hope to achieve population level benefits with broader child vaccination for COVID-19,” write Wesley Pegden, Vinay Prasad, and Stefan Baral in an editorial for the BMJ. “But this is inconsistent with the conditions for emergency use authorisation”
- “Covid Vaccines: The Tip of the Iceberg” – The latest news on vaccine safety and effectiveness from the Swiss Doctor
- “The China model: why is the West imitating Beijing?” – The Second Cold War is gathering momentum, says Niall Ferguson in the Spectator, and China is winning
- “How can we check vaccine safety under this shambolic system?” – Sally Beck argues in the Conservative Woman that the Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s Yellow Card System for reporting and analysing adverse reactions to the vaccines is not fit for purpose
- “A doctor’s plea to doctors: Remember our Hippocratic Oath” – The Conservative Woman highlight’s Dr Tess Lawrie’s address at last week’s conference on the use of ivermectin as a prophylactic and treatment for COVID-19. It was hosted by BIRD, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development organisation
- “The Disappearance of Dissent” – Alistair Cavendish analyses the tactics of the media-political complex when it came to April’s anti-lockdown protests
- “Game, set and mask” – “It appears that Boris Johnson may ask for masks in the classroom to be scrapped on Monday 10th May,” writes Roger Watson at the Unity News Network. There was only ever one correct course of action and that was never to have forced children to wear face masks in the first place
- “Why didn’t our media report this American good sense?” – Florida has passed legislation to fine any business or school $5,000 if it requires proof of vaccination from its customers or pupils, writes Kathy Gyngell in the Conservative Woman. But the UK media “completely ignored it”
- “SAGE lockdown advice ignores the human condition” – Sean Walsh argues in Conservatives Global that Susan Michie’s membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain is not as concerning as her professional vocation as a “behavioural psychologist”
- “Our Current Predicament #43” – The first episode of Our Current Predicament in its new home at Bournbrook Magazine sees S.D. Wickett and Bob Lollard discuss lockdown’s impact on people as social beings
- “EU reviews reports of rare nerve disorder after AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 shot” – Europe’s medicines regulator is reviewing reports of Guillain-Barre syndrome in people who took the AstraZeneca jab, Reuters reports
- “European leaders urge U.S., Britain to match EU generosity on vaccine exports” – Ursula von der Leyen has called on all those debating the merits of a vaccine patent waiver to join with the EU in exporting a large share of what they produce, according to euronews
- “Eurovision’s noisy fans are back despite Dutch pandemic” – Eurovision 2021 is set to go ahead, the BBC reports. Audiences will be capped at 3,500 and all visitors will have to show a negative test result that’s no more than 24 hours old
- “Jens Spahn: Germany’s third COVID wave appears to be ‘broken’” – Germany’s Health Minister is upbeat about the country’s ‘third wave’, according to Deutsche Welle. But he warns that a hasty retraction of recently imposed curbs “would only help the virus”
- “To Defend Public Health, We Need More Than Lockdowns” – The “left’s acceptance of lockdowns has been a serious miscalculation” argues Greek journalist Panagiotis Sotiris in an interview in Jacobin. “Far from offering a break with neoliberalism, the policy has done quite the opposite”
- “Psaki deflects questions on why NIH funded Wuhan Virology Lab” – Questioned about the lab leak theory, the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki passed the buck, according to the Post Millennial
- “Why CDC’s Restrictions For Vaccinated People Could Do More Harm Than Good” – Cameron English takes the CDC to task for its confused messaging on vaccines in an article for the American Council on Science and Health
- “India’s ‘COVID outbreak’ and the need for scientific integrity – not sensationalism” – There does seem to be a major problem in some parts of India, writes Colin Todhunter for Off Guardian, but “we need to differentiate between the effects of COVID-19 and the impacts of other factors”
- “WHO approves China’s Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use” – The World Health Organisation has given its approval to the Sinopharm jab, meaning it can be distributed as part of Covax, the UN programme to send jabs to the developing world, euronews reports
- “Top epidemiologist says virus outbreak is ‘absolutely inevitable’” – According to epidemiologist James McCaw, the risk of a disastrous coronavirus outbreak in Australia is now at its highest level since the pandemic began, the Sydney Morning Herald reports
- According to satirical website Babylon Bee, conspiracy theorists are now more accurate than journalists
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