Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Robyn Urback criticizes the Ford PCs' habit (matched by other conservative governments) of responding to COVID-19 with continued cycles of procrastination followed by panic. And Rachel McLay highlights how political will has been the key factor in Atlantic Canada's success in suppressing the coronavirus.

- Andre Picard writes about the complete loss of perspective involved in focusing on remote risks of vaccines while ignoring the far more severe public health cost of delaying or preventing their use. And Alexander Zaitchik discusses how Bill Gates' involvement in vaccine development and distribution includes pressuring countries to prioritize pharmaceutical monopolies (and associated profits) over the distribution of vaccines.

- Nathalia Passarinho and Luis Barrucho report that the COVID-19 death toll in Brazil includes thousands of young children. And Hannah Ellis-Pedersen discusses a new wave (sparked by new variants) threatening to produce absolute calamity in India. 

- Hawa Mire notes that Ontario's ineffective vaccine rollout has been caused largely by underlying inequalities. And Andrew Jackson and Katrina Miller offer their take on the new normal we should be working to build as we recover from the pandemic.

- The Guardian highlights the need for the media to report on the climate emergency with appropriate coverage - both in paying due attention, and discussing it in sufficiently serious terms. 

- Finally, Martin Lukacs exposes the Libs' secret committee with oil lobbyists which served to ensure that neither any pandemic relief nor any recovery infrastructure would affect the continued dominance of petropolitics in Canada. Christian Favreau characterizes the Trudeau strategy as one of denialism through gradualism. The Canadian Press reports on the continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions due to the weakness of the Libs' half-efforts, while Bob Weber discusses new research showing how Canada is consuming a grossly disproportionate share of the global carbon budget. David Thurton reports on the tens of billions of dollars we continue to spend subsidizing the fossil fuel sector every year. And David Cochrane, Salima Shivji and Aaron Wherry report that the Cons' competing plan is to do even less to price carbon pollution, with a pinch of corporate cronyism tossed in.