Nicola Sturgeon has warned that restrictions on international travel should not be lifted too soon because of the "big risk" of importing Covid variants into the UK.
It is still "too early to say" whether the reopening of indoor hospitality can take place on May 17th because of the risk of Covid variants, according to the Environment Minister.
A member of the JCVI has dismissed claims that the Government's "roadmap" out of lockdown could be "scuppered" by Covid variants as "pessimistic", saying that the immunity gained from vaccines "won’t just disappear".
Two new studies have shown that the Kent Covid variant – which Boris Johnson previously said "may be associated with a higher degree of mortality" – does not cause more severe disease, despite being more transmissible.
Having previously claimed Kent Covid is "twice as deadly", PHE now backtracks and says it's no worse. This hasn't stopped Macron from blaming it for his new lockdown. But are the new variants evading our immune system?
No schools surge, no Christmas surge, and the British variant in decline over a week before lockdown. None of these facts are "right", none of them fits the mainstream narrative. Is someone going to tell the Government?
In an original interview with Lockdown Sceptics, Prof Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, says vaccine passports are a terrible idea, variants are over-hyped and masks are pointless.
by Oliver May New variants are of no concern. There is no need to cancel summer holidays. Millions vaccinated, coupled with immunity from millions of prior infections means we can surf on the crest of the third wave, rather than being remotely concerned about it. In fact, the UK should open now. And vaccine passports, certificates, or whatever name they are being given, will do nothing to improve the health of the population – all headlines we have read and heard over the past week or so. Except, we haven’t. We have heard and read the opposite. And we are instilled with fear from TV and radio adverts, complete with ‘that scary voice’ all too eager to give listeners nightmares, be it your impressionable primary-school-aged daughter, or a frail older lady now terrified into wearing a mask outside while waiting for a bus with no one within a 50-metre radius. But the reality is that the above headlines could have been written – and all based on science. Jayanta Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, the report that called for the focused protection of the vulnerable and no lockdowns, signed by almost 14,000 medical and public health scientists, nearly 42,000 medical practitioners and close to 765,000 concerned ...
Dr Mike Yeadon is back on Lockdown Sceptics! Today we're publishing a new paper by him (and co-author Marc Girardot) looking at how worried we should be about the new variants. They're pretty sanguine.
by Dr Michael Yeadon and Marc Girardot As the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic continues across the globe, many genetic modifications have started to appear in the virus. These are being sequenced, analysed1 and monitored by many scientists. This well known phenomenon occurs continuously for Influenza as well as for coronaviruses. Health authorities and mainstream media have been very wary of supposed heightened risk profiles of these new variants. They are also adamant about a potential risk of evasion from immunity, whether that immunity was acquired via infection or vaccination. Some evolutionary virologists consider that viruses ‘attenuate’, or evolve towards less virulent forms. Some feel that novel pharmaceutical2 and non-pharmaceutical interventions3 – or specific circumstances4 – could possibly disrupt this evolutionary process and favour a more severe variant or threaten acquired immunity. The recent downward trends5 in cases and in hospitalisations across the globe seem to indicate that the virus has probably not mutated in any way that would make it much more dangerous and that a healthy immune system is very capable of dealing with these new forms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Indeed, patients have been shown to recover naturally in most instances just like they did from the original form of COVID-19.6 The paucity of confirmed re-infections with the virus, accompanied by clinical symptoms, despite hundreds of millions of infections over ...
