- “Summer holidays abroad on hold, says Matt Hancock” – The will be no significant expansion of green list in “medium term” the Health Secretary has decided, according to the Telegraph, as domestic freedoms must be protected “at all costs”
- “Stay-at-home holidaymakers warned of summer products shortage” – British firms are struggling to secure summer items like garden furniture, picnic baskets and outdoor toys, the BBC reports, due to a number of factors including COVID-19 restrictions
- “To avert global disaster the West must end its ‘forever’ war against Covid” – “The U.K. is missing its big chance to show that, even with vaccines, the world must learn to live with the virus,” says Sherrelle Jacobs in the Telegraph
- “Education should not be conditional on children having the jab” – “We have only to look to countries that opted to do things differently, such as Sweden, to see that school closures and enforced isolation are political choices, not inevitabilities,” writes Molly Kingsley in the Telegraph
- “Forcing people to prove their Covid status will only widen the U.K.’s health inequalities” – “The Government says showing a Covid certificate will always be voluntary, but for a choice to be truly free the alternative must be tolerable,” say Steve Baker and Dawn Butler in inews in a surprising joint statement
- “Sorry SAGE, but given your record on modelling, why should we listen to you over June 21st?” – “We would do ourselves a favour,” says Ross Clark in the Telegraph, if we remember that “scientific modelling does not give us facts, just vague scenarios which we should be treating with great scepticism”
- “MPs are returning to Parliament in a rebellious mood” – Many MPs are worried that that the hybrid parliament has weakened them and bolstered the executive, the Economist reports, but they are “ready to kick back”
- “What happens next? Gauging the fallout from the pandemic” – The Spectator‘s Fraser Nelson reviews Niall Ferguson new book, Doom, which suggests, he says, that the “worst may be yet to come”
- “Ofcom’s mission creep is a threat to our liberty and more” – Ofcom has been active in regulating media discussion about COVID-19, to the detriment of free speech and, warns Brian Monteith in the Scotsman, the U.K. Government intends to give it more power
- “Vaccine scientist: ‘We’ve made a big mistake’” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Neville Hodgkinson reports on Dr. Byram Bridle’s research into the effects of the spike protein when introduced into the body by the vaccine
- “The Innova lateral flow tests: another scandal in the making? Part 1” – The first instalment of a three-part investigative series looking into the Chinese-made Innova lateral flow test by Sonia Elijah for the Conservative Woman
- “‘Graphite on the ground’: is COVID-19 the West’s Chernobyl moment?” – “By exhibiting more concern for prestige than its people, the Chinese state has re-enacted Chernobyl,” say Dr M. L. R. Smith and Dr Niall McCrae. “But so have Western politicians, scientists and journalists, who uncritically chose to sustain their own positions and prejudices over a genuine commitment to truth-seeking inquiry”
- “The Wuhan ‘lab-leak’ story: more fear porn” – “There’s very little evidence to support the idea the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a lab,” says Off-Guardian. It is just a distraction from the actual Covid story, namely the “manipulation of definitions and statistics to generate the illusion of an apocalyptic plague”
- “We Will Be Free” – In the very first episode of the new podcast, titled We Will Be Free, host Ryan Karter and his good friend Danny discuss attending London protests, dating in the Covid era, Covid secure gyms and more
- “Brussels lifts general face mask obligation from 9th June” – In light of the “improving epidemiological situation”, the Minister President and Mayors of Brussels have decided to lift the mask mandate, the Brussels Times reports
- “Slovakia is second EU country to roll out Russia’s Sputnik V COVID jab” – Slovakia has acquired 200,000 doses of Sputnik V, according to Euronews, but so far only 5,000 brave souls have signed up to receive two shots
- “Portugal minister says Spain requiring COVID-19 test at border ‘a mistake’” – Portugal’s Foreign Minister is seeking confirmation from Spanish authorities that the decision to require a negative COVID-19 test for people crossing the border is a mistake, Reuters reports. If not he’ll take “reciprocal measures”
- “COVID-19: New antibody nasal spray could provide virus protection” – The Jerusalem Post heralds an antibody treatment which, sprayed into the noses of mice, significantly reduced the amount of infection
- “Israel has COVID-19 herd immunity, why vaccinate kids?” – After a study by the Israeli Health Ministry revealed that 21% of children aged up to 16 have antibodies against Covid, officials are questioning whether they really need to vaccinate children, the Jerusalem Post reports
- “Ontario to take first step Friday to reopening” – The province of Ontario is beginning to come out of lockdown, the Toronto Sun reports, allowing restaurant dining outdoors, gatherings of up to ten, and non essential retail from the end of the week
- “Contagious lies: CDC claims hospitalisation rising among unvaccinated teens – contrary to its own data” – The CDC claims that increasing numbers of young people are being hospitalised by Covid, writes Daniel Horowitz for the Blaze. “But its own data shows that hospitalisations among all groups have plummeted over the past six weeks”
- “The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak” – “The COVID-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus,” say Dr Stephen Quay and Professor Richard Muller in the Wall Street Journal
- “America’s Covid Groupthink Functioned Like China’s Repression” – “Marching in ideological lockstep is less forgivable in a society where one has a choice in the matter,” Gerald Baker writes in the Wall Street Journal
- “This Email Reveals Fauci Brushed Off the Best Advice He Could Have Possibly Been Given” – Writing for Townhall, Scott Morefield picks out one of the Fauci’s recently published emails in which, on March 14th, 2020 he was advised that, Great Barrington Declaration style, America should focus its protection on the elderly and immunosuppressed
- “Taiwan says U.S. vaccines coming, extends COVID-19 curbs” – Taiwan, still grappling with an outbreak of COVID-19, is expecting 750,000 vaccine doses from the U.S., Reuters reports. China had offered to send vaccines as well, but the Taiwan Government was concerned about their safety
- “‘We can treat it’: Mortality rate of rare condition linked to AstraZeneca shot plunges” – Doctors are now confident they can detect and treat the rare blood clotting syndrome associated with AstraZeneca’s vaccine, the Sydney Morning Herald reports
- “PM calls for Melbourne lockdown to be lifted ‘as soon as possible’” – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called on the Government of Victoria to lift the lockdown restrictions as soon as possible, 7News reports. The two-week lockdown is set to end on Thursday
- “Facebook, YouTube Erred in Censoring COVID-19 Misinformation” – “Labelling misinformation online is doing more harm than good,” says Faye Flam in Bloomberg and “the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab accident is just the latest example
- “WHO’s Tedros says COVID-19 vaccine inequity creates ‘two-track pandemic’” – The World Health Organisation head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that vaccine inequality has created a “two-track pandemic” with Western countries protected and poorer nations still exposed, Reuters reports
- “Should Recovered COVID-19 Patients be Afforded the Same Privileges as Those Who’ve Been Vaccinated?” – Professor Jay Bhattacharya joins Michael Smerconish to discuss the natural immunity that follows recovery from COVID-19
- “Florida Chose Freedom over Faucism” – “Florida just hosted the largest concert since the pandemic began,” says Governor Ron DeSantis, because “Florida chose Freedom over Faucism”. The crowd seems to approve
News Round-Up
A summary of all the most interesting stories that have appeared about the virus in the past 24 hours – not just in Britain, but around the world.
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Fauci engages in Opience (his misinformed “opinion” dressed up as science) … he’s now 5th on the list of modern mass murderers behind Mao, Stain, Hitler and PolPot …
The Spectator review (perhaps ‘puff’ would be a better term) for Niall Ferguson’s new book contains this: remark :
“there have been no decent books making sense of Covid-19.”
Sorry. Wrong. Lisa Dodsworth’s A State of Fear has been around for some weeks.
This Ferguson is proving to be not much better than the other Ferguson.
I know this is an extreme and hopefully unlikely situation, but it should be considered that if the Wuhan Lab is investigating viruses for biological warfare as there seems some evidence for, it’s possible that the escape of the Covid virus may have been deliberate to test the effect it would have. It is impossible to prove one way or another, but if China is turning into a state with world domination in intent, it’s a frightening thought.
Worth bearing in mind, for those who will undoubtedly seek to use this to whip up confrontation of China, that the issue here seems to be US/Chinese collaboration on gain of function.
As Tucker Carlson recently quoted a former US NSC official saying, explaining why western scientists collaborated to suppress the story:
“If the pandemic started as part of a lab leak, it had the potential to do to virology what Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to nuclear science“.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32V-e7saq60
Good point, and perhaps a blessing. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were highly visible demonstrations of poor design and lack of safety considerations including human error and performance. Big booms as a result and everyone noticed within a few minutes of it all going tits up. Lots of changes followed.
So far I see very little in depth consideration of safety and error in discussion of the type of virological and biological enhancement research relevant here, let alone whether it is even ethical to consider tampering with humans to “improve” them.
There are research programs out there trying to get even more out of human performance, but no one seems too bothered as to ethics and what happens to the individual after being reduced to a gibbering mess through physical, physiological and /or psychological stress.
A key issue, rather different to the big boom type of accident, is that the consequences happen at a more individual level, may not be noted until a long time after the event, or may be argued thus prolonging the adverse event triggers. Escape of foot and mouth, organophosphate poisoning, or other disease vectors or causes, does not so far seem to… Read more »
The leak theory may or may not be true but it’s a distraction. It won’t help us. IMO it will do the opposite.
I’m not particularly interested in where it came from – after all the virus in itself has never been any big problem globally/societally speaking, the problem has always and only been the panic and opportunist responses.
That said, this is a hugely useful story now because it directly highlights and challenges the totalitarian and corrupt information management that has been a major part of our problem in this panic (built as I’ve pointed out on pre-existing pro-censorship attitudes in our societies).
It also helps to discredit some of the major players on the side of evil, and helps to allow disinfecting sunlight to be shone on some of their other misbehaviours. See, for instance:
Was mask-wearing pointless after all? Fauci must be forced to answer
https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/was-mask-wearing-pointless-after-all-fauci-must-answer/
I hope it proves useful in the way you describe. Anyone with an ounce of sense who is half awake would indeed draw the conclusions you set out, should the story be true. But IMO this won’t happen and the mainstream effect will be (1) people are more scared because it is man-made and (2) it’s all China’s fault.
It will definitely be used to fuel confrontation with China. It’s always been very exciting to those with the warmongering kind of inclination and an anti-Chinese bent, who we know from bitter experience are extremely powerful in US sphere societies.
I’m not specially keen on the CCP myself, but whatever they’ve done, the biggest blame lies with world leaders and those who jumped on the bandwagon
“I’m not specially keen on the CCP myself“
Me neither. but I’ve never needed to like a country or its government to oppose those fomenting confrontation and war with it.
“but whatever they’ve done, the biggest blame lies with world leaders and those who jumped on the bandwagon“
Absolutely!
Yes indeed – outright confrontation with China seems like a daft idea. We’ve got huge problems of our own that we need to work out.
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1402158563053686786
The true face of authoritarian evil – cloaked in “niceness” and good intentions, demonising dissenters, preparing the ground for discrimination and for harder men to take direct action against them.
How many more such superficially “nice” and “caring” but actually profoundly evil zero-covid zealots like this man are beavering away quietly in government, academe, healthcare, media and politics, spreading their authoritarian poison?
The truly sad thing is that Hartley-Brewer’s implicit position (that we should all take experimental preventive medicine against this tiny risk, and those who don’t are foolish but should be allowed to be foolish) is the best we are likely to get, coming out of this mass delusional panic. The alternative is zero-covid evil.
“Facebook, YouTube Erred in Censoring COVID-19 Misinformation” – “Labelling misinformation online is doing more harm than good,” says Faye Flam in Bloomberg and “the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab accident is just the latest example Gosh, if only someone had forewarned us that censoring opinions we dislike makes us stupid!
JS Mill On Liberty, Chapter 2: OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
1859
The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it need not be specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put… Read more »
My thoughts on today’s news.
Hancock is still a t osser.
Happy for Belgium.
Florida is awesome.
In Texas, Gov Abbott had signed a bill barring the public and private sector from requring proof of vaccination.
Texas joins Alabama, Iowa and Florida that have made a cold turkey ban of vaccine passports law.
“Should the recovered get the same privileges as the vaxxed”
is the wrong, and in itself discriminatory, question.
No one should have their basic civil rights be taken and no one should be given privileges.
For the first, see major constitutions and democratic history, for the second, see discrimination laws and its history.
Sadly, only Ron DeSantis currently gets that.
He will be the future Churchill in the history books, the rest of them will be the future Hitler and Stalins.
Well said, three cheers.
Perhaps the recovered could get an orange star instead of the yellow one for us unvaxed. Orange for semi clean but still treat with caution (Sarc)
Brilliant idea! Orange is a much better colour for me than yellow. Yellow makes me look ill…
(Also major sarc)
“Marching in ideological lockstep is less forgivable in a society where one has a choice in the matter,” Gerald Baker writes in the Wall Street Journal
No sh*t.
The 30s Germans, Saddam Iraqis, Iranians, Soviet Russians and Chinese have a valid excuse.
We don’t. As such, we indeed are far worse creatures than them.
No matter what stupid names they come up with, it was always the CCP Virus to me and always will be. Why not the Fauci variant, or the Ferguson one they made up for Kent.
Just got back from Tescos where I was challenged by a shop worker for not wearing a mask.
It made me laugh that the only time I get challenged is in June! LOL!
I told her that I was exempt and she accepted that, but told me to get a lan yard from the entrance – which I ignored.
I am curious about these lanyards though and their magical ability to stop viruses LOL!
They may stop little Hitlers, but why give the buggers the satisfaction?
That was an extraordinary interview by Julia Hartley-Brewer with some ‘doctor’ called Richard Taylor. He’s the textbook example of a “dick”; wants lockdown forever because some of us refuse to get jabbed. Shouldn’t there be some sort of IQ test for those working in the medical profession?
IQ is not the issue, it’s character. Honesty, courage. Do you think Vallance and Whitty are dummies? Doctors and scientists are just as vulnerable as the rest of us to groupthink, propaganda, vanity, love of power.
They’re sociopaths, likely to have quite a high IQ. They are completely devoid of EQ.
Vallance and Whitty are more greedy than stupid.
People get to be doctors because of their ability for rote learning, not for their ability to question the prevailing narrative or medical theories. I guess that’s why they are so unquestioning of NICE, WHO, mainstream medical journals, etc etc
Half the doctors were NSDAP members, the highest percentage of all professions by far.
They were also by far the largest group of professionals in the SS.
Dentists even higher.
A book about that written 15 years later was censored and not published for another 25 years.
Nothing has changed.
Lawyers the same. Buckled under the first, faint pressure.
It’s not his IQ, it’s his ideology that makes him a doctator or witch doctator.
Iv’e heard from people who know him that Fauci is near genius-level intellect. Doesn’t stop him being wrong about everything.
His genius is at coming top in bureaucracy, not science.
Remember Josef Mengele was a qualified Dr.
Medical school does not install ethics in a sociopath.
Shipman is a lesser but still appalling case as is Dr Horby of Oxford who overdosed the elderly on HCQ, to prove it didn’t work, totally uncaring of the no of excess deaths he caused.
So in Belgium, you can now go un-face-knickered out of doors, thanks to the Holy Vaccine.
And when this dramatic extension of freedom turns out to make no difference whatsoever to the junk figures on ‘cases’, it will again be attributed to the Holy Vaccine.
I think questions need to be asked about why Belgium has fared so appallingly when it comes to so-called covid deaths. They’ve managed to pretty much fly under the radar of criticism despite being worse than the uk in terms of deaths per million population with a positive “covid” test. The reason given for these deaths might not be true (!), but their excess mortality figures since the start of this shitshow speak for themselves. They’ve already had 3 peaks of significant excess mortality and appear to be headed into a fourth, while the rest of Europe looks quiet. So, what’s been going on, and continues to go on, in Belgium? Is it the testing ground for something?
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
I had to go to A&E today and successfully managed to refuse:
Gel
Mask
Visor
Testing
They really weren’t happy about the last one but I stood my ground, despite being in a vulnerable position. They didn’t even have any counter-argument other than that it was a precaution/policy.
Nurse’s final word on the matter was that if they had to admit me (for an operation) then they couldn’t guarantee they’d be able to find me a bed! Clearly threatening people that they couldn’t have emergency life-saving treatment unless they took the swab had worked for them before!
Wow, you managed all that notwithstanding the appalling threat. That’s inspiring!
Well done! That’s a full house you achieved there!
Did you get her name? She deserves censure for such appalling conduct.
It is always useful to keep a tiny notebook and pencil about you. The words “may I take your name, please” with pencil poised, generally puts the fear of God into droids who are ” just following orders”. Phones can be objected to, but not pen and paper. Recommend it as a standard operating procedure for all sceptics in case of emergency.
Great advice
Good idea, I’m going to carry one with me at all times, so many adult prefects in high viz jackets everywhere you go now!
She’s more likely to get promoted
“WHO’s Tedros says COVID-19 vaccine inequity creates ‘two-track pandemic’”
I’m not remotely interested in what China’s crooked stooge is saying. What interests me is that the headline uses the weasel word “inequity”, although the article uses “inequality”. “Equity” of course means “inequality”, although “inequity” doesn’t necessarily mean “equality”.
People who insist on saying “equity” instead of “equality” boast of their precision of language. In fact “equity” is anything but precise, but they know that. It’s like a spike protein that escapes to circulate in the bloodstream, damaging structures wherever it goes.
The same people will gleefully conflate “equity” and “equality” when it suits them. “Equity” is deliberately designed, like COVID-19, to attack where they want it to attack. The purpose, which will be achieved quickly, is to destroy the concept of equality and instead to legitimise discrimination, segregation and oppression.
No-one in the west is preventing these countries from doing whatever they want to develop vaccines or other treatments locally.
Thank the Lord for De Santis! A walking, talking refutation of the lockdown fascists.
and yet the replies to his tweet are not “thanks” but “you’re all going to die”. sigh.
The only true leader with ethical integrity in the world, in particular in what rump is left of the formerly free West.
To review:
Dr Fauci and the gang were all for following the original WHO guidelines for a pandemic which eschewed lockdowns and saw little value in masks and social distancing. They then suddenly flipped on these issues, along with the politicians and the media, and pretended that nothing had happened.
Questions come to mind….
Around the end of February, they all got phone calls from Bill&Klaus discussing their browsing history and their vacations with Jeffrey Epstein….
You may have a point. Most of the previous blackmailable behaviours, like dishonour, lying, gambling debts, sexual preference etc are all practically de rigueur nowadays. That makes it quite difficult to ensnare someone. A party organiser within the right socialite circles, etc etc are all useful ways of buying and ensuring future compliance.
You aren’t protecting domestic freedoms, you worm. You’ve destroyed them to advance your own wretched career.
Just to be clear, who? not DeSantis?
(What would I give to live in Florida or Texas or South Dakota just now? Talk about old normal)
Oh, I’ve seen it now – stick-at-nought Hancock. I was looking at the article directly above, “freedom over Faucism”!
Hancock, yes. Slightly troubling that anyone would think I’d call DeSantis anything but a beacon of hope!
Thanks so much to whoever downvoted me, I’m talking about Matt Hancock.