ICLE Associate Director of Legal Research Ben Sperry joined Chetachi Egwu’s MediaScope podcast to talk about online speech, the First Amendment, and federal and state efforts to regulate speech on platforms. The full episode can be played below.

Fresh off his second-place finish — behind only former President Donald Trump — in the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ top priority heading into this year’s legislative session is custom-fit to appeal to the CPAC crowd: going after Big Tech social-media companies for their alleged anti-conservative bias.

Read the full piece here.

The government’s roadmap for ending Covid restrictions in England commits it to steps that may increase the rate at which the virus spreads. Some of that is unavoidable. But even as we reopen, there is more that we could do to mitigate the risk, and get us to the summer – and normality – without a resurgence.

Read the full piece here.

This week, Facebook blocked news articles on its apps for all Australian users, and is blocking Australian news articles for users worldwide. This is a drastic step, but it is probably the least bad option the company has left. The Australian government has forced it into this position, with an attempted shake-down of Big Tech that leaves Australians worse off.

Read the full piece here.

After a disastrous pandemic response that led to one of the worst death rates in the world, the UK’s vaccination programme is finally giving it something to be cheerful about. The UK bought early and broadly, prioritising speed and betting that – although it did not yet know which vaccines would work – at least some would make the cut. These early investments made it possible for vaccine manufacturers to invest in more production capacity early on.

In contrast, the EU was slow, prioritised cost reductions, refused to waive liability for vaccine firms if something went wrong, and focused on a smaller number of vaccines – some of which, like France’s Sanofi vaccines, have suffered setbacks.

Read the full piece here.

The biggest threat now facing the country is from new variants of Covid that are resistant to our vaccines. It is already clear that this is possible: Novavax’s vaccine efficacy is 95.6% against the original Covid variant, 86% against the current UK variant, and only 60% against the South African variant, for example. If one emerges that is even more resistant, we could be back to square one.

Read the full piece here.

There is a good chance that the UK’s 2021 is a lot like Australia and New Zealand’s 2020. With vaccinations running at a decent speed, and assuming the Johnson & Johnson and Novavax jabs are also approved, the UK should be able to vaccinate most of the at-risk population against coronavirus by the middle of the spring.

But other countries are much further behind on vaccinations, so there is a danger of a vaccine-resistant variant emerging abroad. If it makes its way to the UK, that could bring us back to stage one, where the virus could again only be controlled by a return to lockdowns.

Read the full piece here.

Toby Young (25 Jan) writes that “lockdowns will cause more harm than they prevent.” But he cites a study that undermines his own claims. The paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research says, “Without any doubt, lockdowns save lives” and proposes that policy-makers “[combine] lockdowns with policy interventions meant to reduce economic distress”.

It looks at the effects of the pandemic as a whole and stresses that much of the economic damage has come from the virus itself. It does not support Young’s claims that the lockdown, rather than the pandemic itself, is the main cause of our economic woes.

Read the full piece here.