News Round-Up

• “Daily Covid stats to be ditched… but not until APRIL” – A senior Whitehall source has revealed the updates on Covid cases, deaths and hospitalisations being published on the Government dashboard will be ditched by Easter, according to the Mail.
• “Omicron subvariant BA.2 likely to have same severity as ‘original’ -WHO” – The emerging BA.2 form of the Omicron coronavirus variant does not seem to be any more severe than the original BA.1 form, an official of the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
• “New study says lockdowns only reduced Covid mortality by 0.2%” – Researchers from Johns Hopkins University found lockdown measures put in place during the early wave of the pandemic only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% in the U.S and Europe, reports the Mail.
• “White House Recommends Spotify Do More to Censor Joe Rogan” – The White House indicated Tuesday that Spotify’s attempts to address what they described as coronavirus “misinformation” on podcaster Joe Rogan’s interviews was not a strong enough response to the freedom of speech controversy, reports Breitbart News.
• “If Britain’s pathetic universities told students the cold hard truth, this is what they’d say” – How odd that this generation isn’t protesting about their rotten treatment by some institutions that have exploited the pandemic, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Sunrise clip slammed as ‘sickening’” – A clip of breakfast TV guests discussing Western Australia’s tough ban on unvaccinated parents visiting their sick kids in hospital has gone viral online, with some users branding the discussion “sickening”, reports news.com.au.
• “Should we let children catch Omicron?” – Restrictions in schools must never return, so children can return to a normality where “they are routinely exposed to, and overcome, viral illness”, write Vinay Prasad and Allison Krug in UnHerd.
• “Why Canada’s truckers will lose” – They are driving into a merciless political establishment structured to resist revolt, writes Michael Cuenco in UnHerd.
• “Saskatchewan Premier to Remove Vaccine Mandate” – Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has heard the cries of the people and responded accordingly: “My Government supports your call to end the cross border ban on unvaccinated truckers,” reports Armstrong Economics.
• “Why Are Myocarditis Rates Surging in Europe?” – Rav Arora reviews some worrying data in the Epoch Times.
• “Filth, sleepless nights and deadly snakes – my hellish week in a Cambodian ‘Covid camp’” – An Irish tourist’s nightmarish quarantine stay went viral, leading the country to abandon its policy, writes Annabel Fenwick Elliot in the Telegraph.
• “Rome burns whilst police chase tweets” – The comments by Sheriff Cottam seem dangerously close to prescribing a view one ‘must’ have about the pandemic and the folk heroes it has borne such as Captain Moore and healthcare workers, writes Jamie Walden in Bournbrook.
• “Majority of public think Boris Johnson should resign over alleged Downing Street parties” – Over two-thirds of Conservative voters believe Johnson had not followed the rules, the new polling also shows, according to the Telegraph.
• “A Deep Dive into COVID-19 Origins, Lab Leak, and the Next Pandemic with Dr. Steven Quay” – Listen to the latest episode of the Dhru Purohit Podcast, looking at the evidence on where the virus came from and why it’s important to know.
• “NHS Nightingale hubs cost £11m to build… only to treat seven patients” – True cost of temporary Covid treatment sites revealed as one facility is said to have treated ‘roughly’ seven people since opening, according to the Telegraph.
• “Nicola Sturgeon takes a saw to classroom doors in ‘crackpot’ DIY effort to stop Covid in schools” – Chopping bottom off each door to improve ventilation is expected to cost around £150, resulting in an estimated total cost to taxpayers of £300,000, reports the Telegraph. Drafty classroom, anyone? And think of the noise in the corridor.
• “Why Academia Is Drawn to Fascism” – Central to the lure of fascism is the lie that power will not corrupt us and the delusion that a person can both hold absolute power and continue to be a morally good person, write Paul Frijters, Gigi Foster and Michael Baker at the Brownstone Institute.
• “Tonga enters Covid lockdown after aid delivered” – Infections are detected among port workers as humanitarian aid arrives after a volcano and tsunami, leading the South Pacific island to impose its first lockdown, according to BBC News. Were they feeling left out? They certainly aren’t following the evidence.
• “Neil Young, the Incidental(?) Prophet of Pfizer” – Half of his catalogue is owned by an investment fund with ties to BlackStone, suggesting a possible commercial motivation for calling for a ban on the questioning of vaccines, writes Tess Lena on her Substack page.
• “US Army Starts Discharging Unvaccinated Soldiers” – The U.S. Army announced Wednesday that it will immediately start discharging, or “separating,” soldiers who refused to receive Covid vaccination, reports the Epoch Times.
• ““Stay Home, Save Lives” wasn’t a good slogan” – The original lockdown slogan had apparently been coined the night before it was unveiled on March 20th 2020 on a conference between the PM and several PR gurus. But it was a mistake, writes Noah Carl on his Substack page.
• “The persecution of the unvaccinated: Are the behavioural scientists culpable?” – The last few weeks have witnessed an outpouring of vitriolic abuse and imposition of prejudicial policies directed against a group of people in our society who have decided not accept the offer of the COVID-19 vaccine, and behavioural scientists bear a lot of the blame, writes psychologist Dr. Gary Sidley.
• “Half-term holidaymakers face ‘Brexit penalty’ Covid restrictions in EU” – Families planning breaks face virus measures not imposed on EU citizens travelling within the bloc, as the EU lifts internal restrictions but keeps them for external countries, reports the Telegraph.
• “Israel to End COVID-19 Vaccine Passport for Most Places” – Top Israeli officials this week decided to abolish the country’s ‘green pass’ COVID-19 vaccine passport for restaurants, hotels, gyms and theatres, according to the Epoch Times.
• “Even with high dose inoculation of virus only 16 out of 36 (44%) had symptomatic infection” – Dr. Clare Craig tweets about the results from the first Covid challenge trial, where less than half of the 36 people who sprayed SARS-CoV-2 up their nose had a symptomatic infection. “Most people are not susceptible to any one variant,” she notes, adding that a real-world dose would likely be lower so even less likely to infect.
• “Germany January Mean Temperatures Falling Since 1988, Contradicting Claims Of Warming” – More off-message data from Pierre Gosselin in the No Tricks Zone.
• “USA swimming updates transgender policy after college athlete beats rivals by record-smashing 38 seconds” – Participants in women’s events will now have to have recorded low levels of testosterone for 36 months prior to competing, reports the Telegraph. But if the record is allowed to stand will it ever be beaten?
• “Whoopi Goldberg’s gaffe proves that woke ‘anti-racism’ can all too easily slip into anti-Semitism” – Critical Race Theory is constructed so that it can only ever end up landing Jews in the role of the despised, writes Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
• “The rules for cancel culture are far from clear – just look at JK Rowling and Michael Jackson” – As a musical based on Jackson’s life opens on Broadway, it seems that some stars are simply too big to be erased or downgraded, writes Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “Chapels should be a ‘safe space’, says Cambridge college dean as slavery row gets its day in court” – Jesus College Chapel seeks to remove plaque to 17th century benefactor Tobias Rustat, as some students find it ‘distressing’, reports the Telegraph.
• “For decency’s sake, let’s quit Strasbourg” – The European Convention of Human Rights is now misinterpreted, misapplied and debases the currency of humanism, writes Andrew Tettenborn in the Critic.
• “Why UCL are shutting the door on Stonewall” – The way the decision was arrived at, through open, positive and constructive debate, was exemplary, and the majority on the board in favour of ending the university’s association with Stonewall was sizeable, writes Alice Sullivan in the Critic.
• “Decoloniser heal thyself” – Decolonisation is a new form of Western elitism that risks turning campuses into ideological bootcamps, writes Patrick Porter in the Critic.
• “Scandal of how Sunak let fraudsters feed on £47bn Covid handouts” – Janice Davis in TCW Defending Freedom on the eye-watering levels of waste achieved by laxity in the Treasury during the pandemic.
• “‘Affected by a free speech event’: Just when you think things cannot get any worse on campus, the people doing this don’t even hide what they are doing anymore” – Jordan Peterson tweets a photo of the ultimate snowflake signage.

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