News Round-Up

• “The care home residents who are trapped in endless Covid lockdowns” – More than half of homes in parts of England have suspended family visits and some dementia sufferers have not seen loved ones since New Year, reports the Mail.
• “Government’s former ethics chief Helen MacNamara fined over ‘raucous’ karaoke party during lockdown” – Ms. MacNamara is among the first group of people to receive a Fixed Penalty Notice in connection with the ‘partygate’ scandal, reports the Telegraph.
• “Keep calm and carry on opening up” – The Government’s Covid strategy, entailing a decisive return to normal, is correct, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
• “Pay rise for WFH civil servants defying requests to return to offices ” – Unions expressed fury at the below-inflation increase but did not mention that those who are continuing to work from home will be enjoying substantial savings in travel costs, reports the Mail.
• “New Covid hybrid XE could be the most transmissible yet, WHO says” – It could be 10% more transmissible than the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron – but according to the UKHSA there have been just 637 cases detected since January 19th and there is currently insufficient evidence to conclude growth advantage or other properties of the variant, reports Yahoo! News.
• “TOGETHER Trial: Is Ivermectin Effective Against Covid?” – The TOGETHER trial of ivermectin against Covid has finally been published in NEJM. While the authors claim that ivermectin failed, the data once again indicate that ivermectin may be moderately effective as early treatment. The study had numerous limitations and seems to have been designed to fail, says the Swiss Doctor.
• “It’s Not the Spike Causing Adverse Effects!” – Marc Girardot reports on findings that the spike protein is absent after the second dose, leading scientists to question whether it could be responsible for adverse effects.
• “At last – a brave politician tells the truth on Covid vaccines” – Kathy Gyngell on TCW Defending Freedom says that Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts is the first Western politician to say it how it is on Covid vaccines, and includes a video and transcript of his speech in the Senate chamber.
• “Let’s put the ‘it’s cuz there are so many Covid shots doled out’ argument to bed” – Jessica Rose estimates that in the U.S. there have been around 2.3 times as many Covid jabs as flu jabs since the start of the rollout, meaning even with this taken into account adverse event reports to VAERS are still over 50 times higher with Covid vaccines than flu vaccines.
• “Why have I caught Covid five times?” – Since the pandemic started, Jack Rear keeps being infected while there are plenty of people who haven’t had it once – but he’s not alone, he writes in the Telegraph.
• “German gas plans could cause ‘structural damage’ to its industrial position, Deutsche Bank warns” – Germany risks “structural damage” to its status as a global industrial powerhouse if it presses ahead with gas rationing in light of the war in Ukraine, one of its leading banks has warned, after Berlin rejected Putin’s demands that “unfriendly” countries make payments in roubles or face having gas cut off.
• “‘Carbon extraction’ only way to stop climate crisis” – A report out tomorrow will say sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is our only chance to avoid disaster, reports the Times.
• “The new Pause lengthens: now seven years six months” – On the UAH satellite monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature dataset, seven and a half years have passed since there was any trend in global warming at all, writes Christopher Monckton on Watts Up With That?
• “Grant Shapps says onshore wind farms an ‘eyesore’ in Cabinet split over expansion” – The Transport Secretary appears to oppose development of new land wind farms despite support for the move from some colleagues, according to the Telegraph.
• “Are cancel-culture activists aware of their sinister bedfellows?” – Censorship is always the first weapon of tyranny – as today’s most repressive regimes plainly exemplify, says Jacob Mchangama in his new book, which Toby reviews in the Spectator.
• “BBC agreed to avoid token women in new SAS drama because story is ‘mainly about men’, says producer” – The decision to stick with a predominantly male cast comes after recurring criticism of the BBC over historical accuracy in its productions, reports the Telegraph.
• “Professor Kathleen Stock backs a new campaign for women’s rights” – Had someone told you, not so long ago, that politicians would be terrified to answer the simple question ‘What is a woman?’ who would have believed it, asks Kathleen Stock in the Mail.
• “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality” – Watch John Cleese in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” tear apart transgenderism in less than two minutes.

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