Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Joel Blit, Chuanmo Jin and Mikal Skuterud point out the importance of thinking ahead and being strategic in determining what activities are permitted or encouragement in the face of a pandemic.

- David Lieb examines how businesses were allowed to dictate U.S. reopenings, with the result that the public interest was sacrificed to the goal of extracting immediate profits. And Laura Ungar, Jason Dearen and Hannah Recht look in depth at Florida's gutting and muzzling of public health services which contributed to some of the worst outbreaks in the country.

- Shawn Jeffords reports on the push by Ontario's nurses for reduced class sizes and mandatory masks in schools. Katherine Wilton reports that hundreds of Quebec teachers are staying home rather than going back to unsafe work environments, while PressProgress reports on the Moe government's alarming advance declaration that teachers aren't facing any unusual dangers. Joanne Laucius reports on the educational assistants and other support workers who are facing even more risk and precarity as a result of COVID-19, while Adam Hunter reports on the Saskatchewan NDP's call for a plan to ensure that substitute teachers have access to sick leave and stable assignments rather than serving as disease vectors between schools. Sarmishta Subramanian raises the possibility of a strike by parents who aren't satisfied that schools are safe. And Mark Iype notes that the Edmonton Public School Board has already seen nearly a third of children pulled from in-person education. 

- Finally, Chris Campbell discusses how the end of British Columbia's eviction moratorium is affecting the mental health of people whose housing is threatened as a result. Scott Leon and James Iveniuk study (PDF) the connections between poverty, race and evictions in Toronto - including the fact that subsidized housing is ultimately more secure. And Shauna Sowersby examines the success of Seattle's tiny home communities which are providing housing for people who were previously homeless.