News Round-Up

• “U.K.’s official Covid cases plunge another 40% and dip below 20k” – Just 19,482 new positive tests were recorded by the U.K. Health Security Agency on Thursday, according to MailOnline. Down 40.3% on last Thursday
• “Your checkout bill for Covid quarantine hotels: £400m” – Nearly £400 million was spent on quarantine hotels, the Telegraph reports, but just one in 50 passengers from red list countries tested positive
• “Healthcare worker tests positive for COVID-19 twice in 20 days in world first since pandemic began, study suggests” – The 31 year-old woman from Spain became infected with the Delta variant followed by the Omicron variant of the virus in under three weeks, according to Sky News
• “First person to have Covid infection for more than a year identified in U.K.” – The patient, who had a weakened immune system, caught the virus in 2020 and tested positive for Covid for 505 days before passing away, the Guardian reports
• “How Badly Did Covid Really Impact on Cancer Care in the U.K.?” – “For decades, British cancer care has lagged far behind countries of similar wealth,” says Karol Sikora in Medscape. “Covid worsened an already dire situation”
• “Anti-vaxx fever – a way of life” – The Conservative Woman publishes Niall McCrae’s story of how he was kicked out of a pub in Brighton. “Not drunken misadventure, but a troubling encounter in the ‘new normal’ of Covid World”
• “Chris Chope’s awkward vaccine questions – and how the Health Secretary avoided them” – In the Conservative Woman, Sally Beck publishes a letter from Chris Chope to Sajid Javid about vaccine injury compensation payments
• “Biden to stop Ukrainians getting in at southern border under Title 42” – President Biden has announced a new program for Ukrainian refugees who want to go to the United States, the Daily Mail reports. Applicants must have a sponsor in the U.S. and be vaccinated against Covid
• “My interview with Josh Yoder about American pilot Bob Snow’s cardiac arrest after landing” – Steve Kirsch speaks to Josh Yoder of U.S. Freedom Flyers about vaccine injury and Captain Bob Snow who suffered a cardiac arrest minutes after landing a plane and nearly died
• “The Ins and Outs of Covid Vaccine Safety” – Writing for the Brownstone Institute, Dr. Martin Kulldorff takes a critical look at the U.S. vaccine safety surveillance systems and how they can answer urgent questions of vaccine safety
• “TSA mask mandate” – Vinay Prasad imagines what might have been if the CDC had run a proper trial of mask mandates on aircraft
• “How Did the States Handle Covid?” – Ethan Yang reviews the National Bureau of Economic Research paper analysing the Covid response state-by-state on behalf of the Brownstone Institute
• “U.S. Justice Department appeals judge’s decision on mask mandate for public transport” – The U.S. Government is appealing a court ruling that ended the transportation mask mandate, the Telegraph reports
• “Shanghai lockdown: Whole communities relocated in anti-Covid drive” – The BBC reports that communities in Shanghai are facing orders to relocate as the city continues to aim at Zero Covid
• “Correlation Between Mask Compliance and COVID-19 Outcomes in Europe” – A study of mask usage by Professor Beny Spira published in Cureus concludes: “These findings indicate that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage”
• “These MPs berated Boris but are guilty of hypocrisy” – Andrew Pierce shines a light on the hypocrisy of Boris’s leading critics in the Daily Mail
• “Matt Hancock is writing a Book about handling of the Covid pandemic” – MailOnline compiles social media’s reaction to the news that Matt Hancock is writing a book about the pandemic
• “Anders who? WHO has no job for Swedish health agency chief” – Anders Tegnell stepped down from his role as Sweden’s chief epidemiologist to join the World Health Organisation but they have no job for him, Reuters reports
• “Workshy Whitehall: why can’t the PM get his civil servants back to work?” – The Spectator’s James Heale on the Government’s losing battle to get civil servants back to their Whitehall desks
• “Home-working civil servants vulnerable to Russian cyber attacks, agency warns” – An alert issued by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance warns that working from home increases the risk of Russian cyber attacks, according to the Telegraph
• “What needs to change in the NHS? Everything” – It’s said that the “NHS has all but ground to a halt due to the ‘coronavirus pandemic’ or the ‘COVID-19 crisis’,” but, writes Roger Watson in the Conservative Woman, “there is some other reason”
• “NHS to be banned from buying supplies from China’s Xinjiang region” – New regulations in Health and Social Care Bill will stop NHS procurement from regions linked to slave labour, the Telegraph reports
• “Do we need Caesar Elon Musk?” – “In the digital age,” writes Mary Harrington in UnHerd, “the right side of history no longer wants to free information, but to curate the right message”
• “Disney stripped of special tax status in Florida over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill” – Walt Disney World crossed Governor Ron DeSantis and lost its status as a self-governing area of Florida as a result, the Telegraph reports
• “Pressure Mounts on Twitter’s Board as Elon Musk Hints at Potential Tender Offer” – The Epoch Times reports on the contest for ownership of Twitter
• “The white guilt in your coffee” – Teresa Mull rebuts the contention that coffee is “unbearably white” for Spectator World
• “I promised everybody that if I could find a way, I would help these people that were suffering” – Eddy Elwood discusses being fined £55k for breaking lockdown by keeping his gym open with Mark Steyn on GB News

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