19 September 2021 – The Daily Sceptic

News Round-Up

“Us For Them’s urgent call to action on Covid jabs for children” – The campaign group says people should email their MPs ahead of Tuesday’s Parliamentary debate on childhood vaccinations in TCW Defending Freedom.
“GPs who won’t see patients are hurting the NHS” – “I used to love the NHS but, increasingly, I feel my relationship with it is on the rocks,” writes Dr. Max Pemberton in the Mail.
“Top scientists say they won’t take third jab until poorer countries have vaccines” – Many researchers, doctors and nurses say they are uncomfortable having a further jab, when others around the world need it more, reports the Telegraph.
“Innova’s iniquity, Part 2: Protected by the U.K. regulator” – “The Government and its agencies have failed to be transparent by not providing the data/evidence to support the argument for the exorbitant cost of the DHSC/NHS Test and Trace scheme,” writes Sonia Elijah in TCW Defending Freedom.
“Is this still about the virus – was it ever? The Week in Review” – Michael Curzon and S.D. Wickett discuss the winter lockdown plan, child vaccination and vaccine passports at home and abroad in the latest Bournbrook Magazine podcast.
“Just how accurate is the John Snow memo?” – Dr. Scott McLachlan writes that “there’s a group of people, many of whom are severely underqualified to be making these pronouncements, who have been pushing the lockdown, long Covid and vax narrative with fearmongering in the mainstream media”.
“Covid Early Treatment” – Based on promising peer-reviewed pre-clinical and early clinical results, Swiss Policy Research has added artemisia annua and arginine to its Covid early treatment protocol.
“Scottish Covid vaccine trialists ‘treated like second-class citizens’” – Novavax volunteers fear that the start of vaccine passports next month could put them at a further disadvantage, reports the Guardian.
“The Dutch Ditch Social Distancing” – Protestors mocked social-distancing rules in the Netherlands this weekend by dancing and partying like free people.
“The Police Association ditches presumption of innocence. Allegedly…” – Does the Victorian Police Association no longer believe in the presumption of innocence? It certainly doesn’t look like it does.
“How the U.S. vaccination drive came to rely on an army of consultants” – Private contractors cost taxpayers millions while demonstrating few clear results and papering over weaknesses in the country’s public health system, reports the Washington Post.
“Mounting fears of a 1970s-style three-day week as Britain’s energy crunch deepens” – Rocketing power prices and a gas storage crisis threaten the recovery and leave the U.K. at the mercy of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, reports the Sunday Telegraph.
“Environmental hubris has left Britain vulnerable to Putin’s gas blackmail” – Of course Russia will take advantage of Britain’s shocking failure to safeguard its energy security, writes Simon Heffer in the Sunday Telegraph.
“Our eco-obsessed Government is sleepwalking into an energy crisis” – We could be facing a hard winter of higher energy bills and even blackouts, writes Rob Lyons in Spiked.
“Kwarteng to hold emergency meeting with gas chiefs over price crisis” – The Business Secretary says he will let small suppliers go bust to protect consumers from higher prices, reports the Guardian.
“Is this the end of white America?” – The far-Right is obsessed with the Great Replacement, writes Eric Kaufmann in UnHerd.
“Lib Dem Ed Davey defends party’s trans rights stance amid activist row” – Ed Davey insists the Liberal Democrats believe in free speech, despite the party’s decision to bar a member from running for Parliament over her views on transgender women.
“Black Lives Matter training among new diversity courses offered to NHS staff” – The courses cover white privilege, unconscious bias, authentic allyship and the intersectionality between race and gender, reports the Telegraph.
“‘The costs, in retrospect, seem far greater than any benefit’” – Toby talks to Mark Dolan on GB News about why he became a lockdown sceptic early on in the pandemic.

'The costs, in retrospect, seem far greater than any benefit'

Toby Young explains why he became a lockdown sceptic early on in the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/Ht6o2iFlQn
— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 19, 2021

By Michael Curzon / 19 September 2021 • 23.39

News Round-Up

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Advice for Parents Concerned About the Vaccination of Their Healthy Children

The Covid vaccine roll-out for healthy 12-15 year-olds is due to begin this week, but scientists remain concerned about the likely side effects. Some teachers tell me their schools still aren’t fully aware of the role they are supposed to play – “I can see it becoming a minefield”, said one teacher at a school in Yorkshire – and there seems to be some confusion among parents about the power they hold. Can they withhold their consent for the vaccination of their children or not?

Parents will be sent consent forms but only, it seems, as a formality since children who are deemed ‘competent’ (the assessment of which contains no set of defined questions) will be able to overrule the decisions of their parents anyway. This is of a piece with the Government’s decision to push ahead with its roll-out despite being told by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) that “there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms” of Covid vaccination in healthy teenagers and that – given the small risk Covid poses to healthy 12-15 year-olds – the “margin of benefit… is considered too small”.

The JCVI is “generous” in its assessment, according to an executive at a pharmaceutical company writing for the Daily Sceptic. (He, by the way, believes vaccines are among the “three greatest medical innovations”, so could hardly be labelled “anti-vax”!) Responding to the data, he says there is a “serious enough” risk of children developing myocarditis after vaccination (inflammation of the heart muscle, the long-term consequences of which aren’t fully understood) whereas the benefits of vaccination are “not well quantified” by the JCVI. The body also fails to properly consider the risk of other conditions following vaccination.

Professor Adam Finn sums up the situation by saying the vaccination of children would not – in normal times – have been approved because of the possible risks. He believes that parents are justified in waiting to allow their children to get ‘jabbed’ until these risks are better understood. But therein lies the problem. What – if anything – can parents do to delay the vaccination of their children?

Advice for Parents Concerned About the Vaccination of Their Healthy ChildrenRead More

By Michael Curzon / 19 September 2021 • 20.07

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U.K. Orchestra Provokes Outrage by Dropping Nearly Half Its Performers To “Prioritise Increased Diversity”

The English Touring Opera has unceremoniously sacked 14 of its white members, some of whom had worked there for decades, after its recently-appointed Musical Director held auditions “prioritising diversity”. The move has proved sufficiently extreme to anger even the Musician’s Union, which has hitherto been an advocate for such policies. The Daily Mail reports:

The musicians, aged 40 to 66, have been told they will not be offered contracts with the company in Spring 2022 citing diversity guidance from the Arts Council England, the Sunday Times reported.
The musicians, who officially work as freelancers, can be dropped from the opera season-on-season but many have played with the company for up to 20 years and consider it a permanent job.
The Arts Council England has hit back at the ETO, which it funds to the tune of £1.78 million a year, saying it never encouraged the company to sack musicians.
“We did not instruct the English Touring Opera to send this letter,” the Council said. “We are now in conversation with ETO to ensure no funding criteria have been breached.”

The unfortunate artists received the following from the orchestra’s director:

U.K. Orchestra Provokes Outrage by Dropping Nearly Half Its Performers To “Prioritise Increased Diversity”Read More

By Conor Chaplin / 19 September 2021 • 15.36

diversity equity equity and diversity Music musicians union orchestra woke

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Booster Jab Invitations to Be Sent to 1.5 Million People in England This Week

The booster vaccine roll-out is well underway in England, despite warnings that this could help to cause a permanent state of lockdown. 1.5 million invitations are being sent to people – starting with those aged 50 and over, as well as to the clinically vulnerable and healthcare workers – this week to book their third dose. Sky News has the story.

Texts will be sent out on Monday, while letters will be posted to those who are eligible for a third coronavirus vaccine dose later in the week, NHS England said.
Around 1.5 million people will be contacted and encouraged to use the National Booking Service.
Those eligible for booster jabs include those aged 50 and over, people living and working in care homes for the elderly and frontline health and social care workers.
Booster shots will also be available to those who are clinically extremely vulnerable and anyone aged 16 to 65 in an at-risk group for Covid.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said this week that people should receive their booster dose at least six months after they received their second Covid jab.
The JCVI also said half doses of the Moderna jab could be used as an alternative.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said boosters will “strengthen the wall of defence” created by the vaccines.

Ministers say the success of the booster vaccine roll-out (and of the roll-out of vaccines for children) will determine whether further restrictions – including mask mandates, vaccine passports and possibly another lockdown – should be imposed this winter.

The Sky News report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon / 19 September 2021 • 10.49

booster vaccine Vaccine

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The Lancet Changes Mind on Lab Leak Theory – Calls for “Objective, Open and Transparent Debate”

The Lancet appears to have had a change of heart on the lab leak theory, having published an article calling for an “objective, open and transparent debate” on Covid’s origins – a whole 19 months after writers “strongly condemn[ed] conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid does not have a natural origin“. The idea that the evidence points away from the lab leak theory and towards a natural origin “could [now] literally be reversed”, say the authors of the new article. “There is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible.” The Mail on Sunday has more.

It was revealed earlier this year that Peter Daszak – a British scientist with long-standing links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – had secretly orchestrated a landmark statement in the Lancet in February 2020 which attacked “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid does not have a natural origin”.
The now-infamous letter, signed by 27 leading public health experts, said they stood together to “strongly condemn” the theories which they said “do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice”.
They also lavished praise on Chinese scientists who they said had “worked diligently and effectively to rapidly identify the pathogen behind this outbreak… and share their results transparently with the global health community”.
Now, the Lancet has agreed to publish an alternative commentary which discusses the possibility that laboratory research might have played a role in the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
It also directly confronts the efforts of science journals to stifle debate by labelling such theories as “misinformation”. …
[The authors say] the February 2020 statement “imparted a silencing effect on the wider scientific debate”.
And they say scientists, “need to evaluate all hypotheses on a rational basis, and to weigh their likelihood based on facts and evidence, devoid of speculation concerning possible political impacts”.
Science itself, they go on, should “embrace alternative hypotheses, contradictory arguments, verification, refutability, and controversy” and rather than congratulating China on its supposed “transparency”, they call on the secretive superpower to open up.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon / 19 September 2021 • 10.00

covid origins Lab leak The Lancet

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News Round-Up

“Japanese Researchers Investigate Intracranial Hemorrhage Deaths Possibly Caused by Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine” – Two Japanese medics have written a paper analysing potential adverse events associated with the Covid vaccines in Japan.
“Professor Sunetra Gupta explains the significance of COVID-19 variants.” – How scared should we be of variants?
“The Boys Who Cried Wolf” – Throughout 2020, the media reported a “scientific consensus” about the pandemic’s origins without providing any evidence it was zoonotic.
“GM Warns Chevy Bolt Owners Not to Park Within 50ft of Anything You Care About” – In the wake of a series of severe battery fires, General Motors has just issued a safety recommendation not to park your Chevy Bolt within 50ft of other vehicles, in case it catches fire.
“Rupert Murdoch celebrates his 90th birthday with TV comeback bid” – TalkTV, with its star presenter Piers Morgan, stands to let 90-year-old media mogul show he can succeed where GB News has stumbled.
“The curious lack of opposition to Italy’s vaccine passport” – Protests in Italy against ‘Il Green Pass’ have been pathetic, writes Nicholas Farrell in the Spectator. Why?
“Lone MP puts his head above the parapet for vaccine victims” – A tribute to Sir Christopher Chope in the Conservative Woman.
“Experimental reactor could hand China the holy grail of nuclear energy” – China is due to fire up an experimental nuclear reactor this month that could revolutionise the atomic energy industry.
“Anti-vaxxers in London march against plans to give children Covid jab” – Thousands of vaccine sceptics descended on London yesterday holding signs reading “stay away from our kids” and a boy held a card with “I’m a child, I can’t consent”.
“Bank of England spends £27,000 on diversity consultants” – Payment to Delta Alpha Psi, which increases ‘race fluency’, came weeks before appointment of Oxford-educated white man as Chief Economist.
“Handrails won’t kill you but Covid Hezbollah might!” – In his latest column for the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens laments that people travelling on the London Underground are tumbling down escalators in greater numbers because they are afraid to grasp the handrail for fear of catching Covid.
“Their warnings proved inaccurate, but ‘experts’ still have Boris’s ear” – From the first appearance of the virus, SAGE has been accused of over-egging its predictions in order to frighten Ministers into taking drastic action.
“Now the Lancet U-turns over Covid lab leak theory” – The Lancet has agreed to publish an alternative commentary which discusses the possibility that Chinese laboratory research might have played a role in the emergence of the virus.
“Found out: Facebook’s week of shame” – Somewhere deep within the ranks of Facebook’s 60,000 workers, someone reached breaking point. They downloaded mountains of damning documents and handed them to the Wall St Journal.
“University of Exeter professors ready to rebel over request to use tweets not textbooks” – Professors have branded it an “erosion of standards” and accused senior leaders of pursuing a “Wokefinder General” attitude on campus, reports the Telegraph.
“Prove your Covid status if you want to party, U.K. students told” – Student unions are going further than government guidelines, in an attempt to avoid virus outbreaks like those of last year, according to the Guardian.
“Covid in Australia: we outback nomads are putting the virus in our rear-views” – Every autumn in Australia, a procession of campers migrates from the south of the country to escape the winter and enjoy the sunshine in the north.
“Closure of Covid taskforce leads to ‘brain drain’ ahead of winter” – According to the Independent, the Governmment’s Covid Taskforce is being “hollowed out” just as it might be needed more than ever.
“Melbourne Freedom Protest Highlights” – Video footage of the protests in Melbourne on Saturday.
“Anti-lockdown protests erupt in Melbourne and Sydney” – Anti-lockdown protests erupted across Australia with demonstrators shutting down streets in Melbourne and protestors using an app to navigate around Sydney roadblocks, according to MailOnline.
“Why have British police treated eco activists with kid gloves, when they’ve clamped down so hard on lockdown protesters?” – Astonishing footage of police officers seemingly facilitating an environmental ‘protest’ that brought a motorway to a halt is all the proof you need that law-breaking eco activists are held to a different standard to anti-lockdown protestors, argues Prof Frank Furedi in RT.
“Scientific Distortion: A Tale of Two Paradigms” – The latest blog post from Omar Khan contrasting modelling with empirical data.
“Our leaders have done their utmost to drive wedges between us” – Neil Oliver on GB News says the coming months and how we respond to measures the Government puts in place to try to control the virus will define who we are as a country.

💬 'Our leaders have done their utmost to drive wedges between us'

Neil Oliver says the upcoming months will define who we are as a country, amid the possible introduction of vaccine passports and lockdown restrictions. pic.twitter.com/RNa4exFvXJ
— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 18, 2021

By Toby Young / 19 September 2021 • 02.52

News Round-Up

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Day: 19 September 2021