Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Umair Haque discusses the tragic mistake governments in Europe and North America have made in refusing to make plans sufficient to wipe out COVID-19 altogether, rather than assuming a substantial level of spread could be controlled. Sarah Rieger talks to Stephen Duckett about the effect of Australia's lockdown which has now allowed much of that country to return to a relatively normal state. And Graham Thomson writes about Jason Kenney's sorely-belated recognition that he can't bluster and deny his way out of a public health disaster.

- Tom Parkin writes that the Trudeau Libs shouldn't be seen as having successfully dealt with COVID-19 merely because they've cleared the bar of being less destructive than the Trump administration. Nicole Thompson reports on the Canadians seeking student loan relief who have been unable to reach an overwhelmed National Student Loans Service Centre. And Peter Zimonjic and Catherine Cullen report on the shock to people who applied for the CERB based on the simple threshold of having $5,000 in income in the previous 12 months, only to be facing repayment demands based on the theory that qualification had to be based on net income from 2019 alone.

- Meanwhile, Kamyar Razavi and Mike Le Couteur report on the success of the CERB in demonstrating the value of an unconditional basic income - making the later retrenchment all the more frustrating.

- Shikha Gupta and Mary Ann McColl discuss how Canadians are forced to ration and underuse prescribed medicine for lack of pharmacare to cover the cost of prescriptions.

- Finally, the Star's editorial board calls out Erin O'Toole and the Cons for effectively endorsing anti-vaxx scaremongering.