Northern Ireland has become the first part of the U.K. to offer appointments for Covid vaccines to its entire adult population. People aged 18-39 will have the option to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, despite its potential links to blood clotting (particularly in younger people) and, now, strokes. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said earlier this month that Brits below the age of 40 should only be offered alternatives to this vaccine “where possible“. BBC News has more.
More than one million people in Northern Ireland have received a first dose of a Covid vaccine.
The Department of Health said vaccine supplies had become limited and 20,000 slots would be available each week.
The limit is to help manage the availability of the Pfizer vaccine after regulators said under 40s should be given an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine, the department said.
However, it said anyone aged between 18 and 39 years old could still choose to have AstraZeneca jab…
Walk-in vaccination centres are open to over-18s in some parts of Wales, while in Scotland 18-to-29 year-olds can register for a text or email when they become eligible for an appointment.
A total of 1,6460,981 vaccines have been given so far in Northern Ireland…
Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride said Northern Ireland was “dealing with the emergence of new variants” and that everyone had “a part to play in keeping each other safe”.
He said: “I know that many young people will be very keen to book their jab now that they’re eligible for vaccination.
“It’s important to understand that while the risk of severe disease is lower in young people, some may become very ill and, of course, they can pass on the virus to others who may be more vulnerable.”
He urged everyone aged 18 and over to book a slot for vaccination, including those in older age-groups who have yet had a jab.
“Has the Covid vaccine blood clot puzzle been solved?” – Researchers at Goethe-University and Ulm University in Germany say they’ve worked out why the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs have been causing blood clots, the Daily Mail reports, and they think the problem can be fixed
“Dominic Cummings showed that at heart he is a ruthless totalitarian” – Cummings “criticises ministers for not following the Chinese example faster than they did”, writes Jonathan Sumption in the Telegraph. “But he forgets that there were moral and not just pragmatic reasons for that”
“Covid could yet destroy Johnson. But not in the way Cummings expects” – The public doesn’t blame Boris for his “many mistakes of the past 18 months”, says Alistair Heath in the Telegraph, because “there is a widespread belief that he did his best”. But they will only put up with the side effects of lockdowns for so long
“What a Wuhan lab leak would really mean” – Ian Birrell describes the lab leak theory’s journey from crazy conspiracy to credible hypothesis and analyses the implications of it ever being proved true in a piece for UnHerd
“The unseen evil of Covid restrictions … a dehumanising denial of physical contact” – “There should have been more outrage at the inhuman restrictions placed on us since March 2020,” says Frank Palmer at the Conservative Woman, arguing that the full significance of the physical restrictions have not “been deeply enough understood”
“A dispatch from the Covid word war” – Stuart Major provides the Conservative Woman with a detailed survey of how language has been weaponised by lockdown zealots
“Britain’s State of Fear” – Laura Dodsworth is the guest on the latest Delingpod, telling James all about her sell-out book, A State of Fear
“France puzzled by mystery anti-Pfizer campaign offer” – Several social media influencers in France say they have been approached by an agency, claiming to be based in the U.K., to spread negative publicity about the Pfizer jabs, according to the BBC
“Mild COVID-19 induces lasting antibody protection” – The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has says that people who’ve recovered from a mild bout of the disease will have immune cells in their body pumping out antibodies against the virus for months afterwards and they could last a lifetime
“Why did the Biden administration shut down Pompeo’s lab leak probe?” – Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opened a State Department inquiry into whether COVID-19 leaked from a lab, but the Biden administration closed it down. Cockburn of Spectator USA suspects party politics were at play
“Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity?” – “Few Americans yet recognise how badly their rulers failed them,” says James Bovard at AIER, and the more people there are that view “Government as their personal saviour, the easier it becomes for politicians to demagogue to ever greater power”
“Thousands break Covid rules to attend horse’s funeral in India” – Up to 2,000 people in the state of Karnataka, India, most of them without masks, broke lockdown rules to attend the funeral of a horse, according to the Metro. Officials have responded by closing the state’s borders
“Fauci reads and reaps the political wind” – “Americans’ trust in public health institutions has slipped from over 80 to 52% since the start of the pandemic,” Ramesh Thakur notes in the Spectator Australia. The main reason he says is “the mutating variants of bureaucratic advice”
“Don’t Worry, Everyone: The Experts Are in Charge” – A new episode of the Tom Woods Show in which Tom talks to Kathryn Huwig about why things might have been better if the experts weren’t in charge
Vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi suggested self-isolation for fully-vaccinated people could continue after June 21.
Alan Miller Co-founder of Open For All: "It's time to get back to normal. No restrictions, we need to get our society and our lives back."@mrmarkdolan | @alanvibepic.twitter.com/xBSyylhIc7
Lockdown Sceptics‘ readers have had their fill of Dominic Cummings stories in the last 24 hours. However, his claim, repeated yesterday in front of MPs, that without a lockdown last March “the NHS is going to be smashed in weeks” cannot go unanswered.
These are the words that, according to Cummings, data analyst Ben Warner said to Boris Johnson when he confronted him with “evidence” on Friday March 13th 2020 that a lockdown was necessary to prevent the NHS being imminently overwhelmed.
March 12th and 13th 2020 are notable for being the days when various Government advisers did the media rounds to sell to the public the idea of “building up some kind of herd immunity“, as Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance put it on Radio 4’s Today programme. Prior to this, the Government had been sticking to the script of their action plan and pandemic preparedness strategy that did not talk about herd immunity (even if it implied it) but about mitigation of the impact of the disease.
Whose idea it was to start talking about building up herd immunity by infection is not clear, and, despite pontificating for seven hours yesterday, Dominic Cummings did not enlighten us on that point. The move was, however, disastrous for Government public relations, as the concept jarred with the public. Worse, it was criticised by scientists and health care professionals, who argued that herd immunity through infection was not a sound policy aim even if it would be the inevitable result of the mitigation strategy. Dr Adam Kucharski from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine put the matter succinctly on Twitter:
Professor Neil Ferguson says that the spread of the Indian Covid variant could result in lockdown restrictions needing to be “tightened” – but as Britain recorded more than 3,000 Covid cases today for the first time in a month, deaths remained in the single figures. This follows Professor Sunetra Gupta’s recent warning regarding fear being drummed up about variants due to an increase in cases.
What we’re trying to do is prevent people from dying. Whether or not infections go up with a new variant is not relevant. It is important that people don’t die.
We have protected vulnerable people now… I’m sure that [vaccines] will protect vulnerable people against this new variant from death. Maybe not from infection, but that’s not relevant…
The MailOnlinehas more on the most recent Covid figures.
Daily infections today (3,180) spiked by 18% compared to last Wednesday’s figure, reaching their highest level since April 12th (3,568).
But deaths remained in single figures, with nine fatalities today up slightly on the three posted last Wednesday. Day-to-day counts can fluctuate – but the overall trend remains flat.
And Britain’s mammoth vaccine drive continued at full steam ahead, with 387,987 top-up jabs dished out across the country yesterday. It takes the U.K.’s number of fully vaccinated adults to more than 23.6 million…
It comes as “Professor Lockdown” Neil Ferguson today said it was impossible to say whether the June 21st date for England’s last stage of easing restrictions will go ahead because of the Indian variant.
He warned the B.1.617.2 strain – which is now spreading in almost half of England’s 300-plus authorities – could hinder Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown and lead to measures needing to be “tightened”, if data showed it was much more transmissible.
But the notoriously cautious academic struck a note of optimism, saying the huge vaccine roll-out means the U.K. is currently in a “much better place” than in December, when the Kent variant first began surging through the country before triggering a devastating second wave.
And Professor Ferguson… also suggested the nation could cope if the variant was proven to only be 20 to 30% more transmissible – which SAGE experts say is feasible.
Audiences at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club won’t be dancing cheek to cheek anytime soon, with the famous London venue having introduced a raft of “Covid protocols” (some already required by the Government, others not), including mask-wearing, facial thermometers and protective screens. Here’s a list of new rules from their website.
Face coverings must be worn when entering and leaving the venue or anytime you are not seated. Staff will wear face coverings.
Upon entering the club there will be an optional sanitiser station and a facial thermometer which you will be asked to use;
All guests must scan the Track and Trace QR Poster on arrival at the club.
We have removed entrance furniture to ease congestion in and out of the venue;
We have increased our cleaning system using medical grade sanitiser on all surfaces;
We politely ask customers not to bring excessive baggage that needs to be checked into the cloakroom to ease congestion upon entering and leaving the club;
Increased hand washing of staff and staff health declarations;
We have gone cashless. Your PDQ machine will be cleaned between each use;
We have reduced capacity to 50% to allow for spacing between guests;
We have adapted our air conditioning system to ensure there is 100% fresh air being circulated in the club;
We have installed some protective screens in certain areas.
As if this wasn’t enough, the Club points out that these are “just a few” of the measures which it has introduced to ensure the safety of its staff, musicians and audience members. Incredibly, it says that this can all be done while “maintaining the atmosphere of the club”. Yeah, right!
If all (or most) live entertainment venues return to action in this manner, their post-lockdown recoveries could well be short-lived.
The Department for Education’s (DfE) lack of planning for how to deal with a pandemic, along with its failure to set standards for remote learning when lockdowns struck, resulted in children receiving “unequal [educational] experiences” over the past year, according to a new report. This report also says that the department has been “surprisingly resistant” to investigating the shortfalls in its Covid response. The Guardianhas the story.
Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also said there was evidence that the Government’s £1.7 billion catch-up programme – designed to restore the learning lost during school closures – may not be connecting with many of the most disadvantaged children. The committee’s report describes the DfE as having “worthy aspirations but little specific detail”.
Meg Hillier, Chair of the PAC, said: “The pandemic has further exposed a very ugly truth about the children living in poverty and disadvantage, who have been hit particularly hard.
“Online learning was inaccessible to many children even in later lockdowns and there is no commitment to ongoing additional funding for IT. Schools will be expected to fund laptops out of their existing, and already squeezed, budgets.”
Hillier said the DfE “appears uninterested in learning lessons from earlier in the pandemic”, preferring to wait for later public inquiries.
“It shows little energy and determination to ensure that its catch-up offer is sufficient to undo the damage of the past 14 months,” Hillier said.
The report, after hearings conducted by the bipartisan committee, was deeply critical of the DfE’s failings towards children with special educational needs and disabilities, many of who struggled with remote learning, and over the future of the more than one million digital devices it had distributed to schools at a cost of £400 million.
The DfE told the committee that the laptops and tablets were now owned by schools and local authorities, which would have to maintain and update them using existing budgets.
The committee accused the DfE of being “unprepared” for the disruption despite taking part in the Government’s 2016 cross-departmental exercise to test the U.K.’s response to a pandemic, called Operation Cygnus. The MPs also found that the DfE was “surprisingly resistant” to investigating its response since March 2020.
Numerous studies have highlighted that pupils made little to no progress while learning from home – so why the reluctance from the DfE to investigate its errors in fixing this?
Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s former Chief Aide, began his appearance in front of a joint meeting of the Science and Technology Select Committee and the Health and Social Care Select Committee today by apologising for his own mistakes relating to the Government’s response to Covid and for falling – alongside ministers, advisors and other officials – “disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect… in a crisis like this”.
It didn’t take long for Dominic’s attention to turn to the failings of others. Perhaps his most eye-catching assertion was that Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been sacked “for at least 15 to 20 things”, including “lying to everybody on multiple occasions”. The MailOnlinehas more.
He accused the Health Secretary, among other things, of overplaying the U.K.’s readiness for a massive infectious disease outbreak early last year.
And in a gobsmaking [sic] personal attack, which even took the MPs on the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees by surprise, he today said: “Like in much of the Government system, there were many brilliant people at relatively junior and middle levels who were terribly let down by senior leadership.
“I think the Secretary of State for Health should’ve been fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the Cabinet room and publicly.
“There’s no doubt at all that many senior people performed far, far disastrously below the standards which the country has a right to expect. I think the Secretary of State for Health is certainly one of those people.
“I said repeatedly to the Prime Minister that he should be fired, so did the Cabinet Secretary, so did many other senior people.”
Mr Cummings said one of Matt Hancock’s lies was that everybody got the treatment they deserved in the first peak when “many people were left to die in horrific circumstances”.
Asked to provide evidence of the Health Secretary’s lying, the former Chief Aide to the Prime Minister told the Commons committee: “There are numerous examples. I mean in the summer he said that everybody who needed treatment got the treatment that they required.
“He knew that that was a lie because he had been briefed by the chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer himself about the first peak, and we were told explicitly people did not get the treatment they deserved, many people were left to die in horrific circumstances.”
Mr Cummings said that assurances given to him by Mr Hancock in January last year that pandemic preparations were brilliant “were basically completely hollow”.
Other points made by Cummings relating to the Government’s Covid response were highlighted by Toby last night, and Sky News has since produced a handy report on the main allegations made in the session.
The central fantasy in the Cummings testimony is that he and a couple of brainiacs invented lockdown late in the night in Number Ten, bravely going against the consensus.
In reality it was simply the UK falling into line with the same policy as the rest of the Western world.
Stop Press 2: Having watched DC’s testimony, Ross Clark says in the Telegraph that it’s just as well he’s out of Government because his contempt for democracy was palpable.
Stop Press 3: A senior Tory has told the Telegraph that Hancock is now the Cabinet member least likely to be moved in the coming reshuffle.
Dominic Cummings might be gunning for Matt Hancock – but that doesn’t mean he is at risk from a demotion at the next reshuffle if the word in Westminster is to be believed.
One senior Tory tells me: “Matt Hancock has now got the safest role in govt – Boris won’t sack him now.”
That’s not to say the claims aren’t being believed. “[Matt] can exaggerate,” says the MP. “He hears things are possible and then tells you that it is already happening. It’s v plausible.”
But he is safe because the Prime Minister “won’t admit Cummings is right… it would show weakness if Boris did it now”.
“And Hancock is the shield for the boss,” the backbencher adds.
The economic disruption caused by numerous lockdowns has been deeply felt by Marks & Spencer (M&S), with the retailer’s full-year profit having slumped by 88%. This is largely due to a collapse in clothing sales, the recovery of which is likely to be hampered by the post-lockdown shift to “hybrid working“, where staff only visit the office some of the time. Despite this, the company says it has traded well in the early weeks of the 2021-22 year and that it believes profits will recover. Reutershas more.
M&S, which also sells upmarket food, made a pretax profit before one-off items of £50.3 million… in the year to April 3rd, down from the £403.1 million made in 2019-20.
The 137-year old group, one of the best-known names in British retail, said like-for-like clothing and homeware sales plunged 31.5%, damaged by multiple coronavirus lockdowns which shuttered stores.
Clothing and homeware sales in stores crashed 56.2%, partly offset by online growth of 53.9%.
In food, where space remained open during the crisis, like-for-like sales rose 1.3%.
On a statutory basis, M&S sank to a pretax loss of £209.4 million, versus a profit of £67.2 million in 2019-20.
All U.K. clothing retailers have been hit hard by the pandemic. Last month Primark… which does not trade online, reported a drop in annual profit of 90%. Next, … which has a huge online business, has shown greater resilience but its full-year profit still fell 53%.
The damage to its profits has forced the retailer to commit to closing another 30 stores over the next 10 years. BBC News has the story.
M&S has already closed or relocated 59 main stores, as well as cutting 7,000 jobs across stores and management.
The chain has reported big losses for last year as the pandemic took its toll on clothing sales.
But food sales were up thanks to its Ocado tie-up, contributing to “a resilient financial performance in a year of disruption”…
The High Street stalwart currently has 254 full-line stores… It says that a number of them are in long-term decline and cannot justify future investment.
About 30 stores will gradually close over the next decade, while another 80 will be moved to better locations or merged with nearby shops.
The group will open 17 new or expanded main stores over the next two years, including a number of former Debenhams sites.
At this stage of the pandemic, you really can’t get away with sweeping, unqualified claims about the virtues of lockdown – there’s just too muchevidence in the other direction. So the LA Times discovered last week.
On May 19th, the paper published a column entitled: “The evidence is clear – COVID lockdowns saved lives without harming economies.” However, when it shared the article on Twitter, it ended up getting severely ratioed. As of this writing, the relevant tweet has 384 likes and 3.8 thousand comments – the vast majority of them critical.
One of the most popular replies says, “Tell that to the 100,000 people that lost their businesses, livelihood, and life’s work.” The user followed this up with, “My bad. I mean 200,000”, linking to an article in the Wall Street Journal.
So what arguments did the LA Times columnist put forward?
He begins by claiming that “lockdowns played a significant role in reducing infection rates” and that “they had a very modest role in producing economic damage”. He then argues that “evidence for both propositions has been expertly compiled by Noah Smith”, linking to a recent article by Smith.
The author moves on to the comparison between California and Florida, noting that “California now boasts among the lowest case, hospitalisation and death rates in the nation, as well as a recovering economy”. However, the fact that its case and death numbers are currently “among the lowest” is more-or-less irrelevant, given that the virus is in retreat across the entire country.
And although the state’s GDP declined by only 2.8% last year – compared to Florida’s 2.9% – its unemployment rate is the second worst of all 50 states. 8.3% of Californians are currently out of work, versus only 4.8% of Floridians.
“Nicola Sturgeon drops Covid elimination strategy” – The Scottish First Minister has allowed that if the vaccines have “broken the link” between cases, admissions and death, there is no need for “aggressive” lockdowns, the Telegraph reports
“Why children and COVID-19 is an ethical minefield” – “If my children were still infants or young teenagers today,” says Alison Pearson in the Telegraph, “nothing on God’s Earth would persuade me to allow them to have the Covid vaccine”
“Important Letter Regarding Informed Consent” – The Inform Scotland group has written to various regulatory and governmental bodies in Scotland to raise concerns that the principle of informed consent is being ignored in the vaccine roll-out
“The rise of vaccine virtue-signalling” – Few things make Portia Berry-Kilby “swipe left faster”, she says in the Spectator, than a reference to vaccination in someone’s dating profile. “Please let us not mistake a vaccine shot for a personality”
“Let down by the pro-vaccine sceptics” – “Pro-vaxxer liberalism is also heroically optimistic,” says Paul Collits, “if they think that vaccines and vaccine passports will persuade governments to ease off on lockdowns”
“Is this the future anyone wants?” – The Conservative Woman‘s Kathy Gyngell highlights a video showing a “dystopian future, of monitoring, control and zero freedoms”
“A post-Covid boom? Not so fast” – “Pundits are getting a little carried away by the signs of a rapid economic bounce-back,” writes Phil Mullan in Spiked. “But it is too early to draw strong conclusions”
“Papers, Please! Oregon Now Requires Proof of Vaccination” – “Oregon finally ended its ‘outdoor’ mask mandate, a full year and a half into Covid Mania,” Jordan Schachtel reports. “But in exchange for ‘granting’ citizens the freedom to breathe fresh air, they will now be forced to show ‘proof of vaccination’ if they want to participate in society”
“Asian deaths will push Covid toll over 2020” – The outbreaks in Asia mean the number of COVID-19 fatalities this year will overtake 2020’s total within the next three weeks, according to the Times
“Hanoi closes restaurants, salons as COVID-19 threat mounts” – Hanoi’s chairman Chu Ngoc Anh has announced the closure of hospitality businesses, except for takeaway services and told residents that they must “absolutely stop entertainment activities, physical exercise and large gatherings in parks”, the VNExpress reports
“The President! What Did he Tell Us?” – A video from the Brave Wilderness YouTube channel in which President Joe Biden and Dr Anthony Fauci extoll the virtues and benefits of vaccinations for everyone over the age of 12. Travel is one of them, although they warn that you’ll still have to wear a mask in transit even if you’ve been vaccinated
⚠️ If Govt still keeps restrictions in place after 21 June because “there is still a risk of getting the virus and spreading it on” (as a Govt source told @Telegraph today), then restrictions will be with us forever… (1/2) pic.twitter.com/ob6ceBVh8N
