Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jason Warick reports on how the lack of enforcement of public health rules has emboldened anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers to impose their disregard for community safety on the people around them. Guy Quenneville highlights the Moe government's decision to do absolutely nothing in the face of a COVID-19 surge hitting Saskatoon (despite the efforts of the people who best understand the crisis). Mia Rabson reports on the deployment of military personnel to coronavirus hot zones - as well as Theresa Tam's recognition that any responsible government would a long way from talking about any return to "normal". Joe Roberts calls for the Libs to invoke the Emergencies Act rather than sacrificing lives to provincial callousness and incompetence. And Canada News Central writes that the governments responsible for ineffective pandemic responses deserve to be wiped out at the polls - while Nova Scotia continues to demonstrate that there's an alternative to letting short-sighted corporate interests and anti-science wingnuts dictate public policy.

- John Paul Tasker reviews the history behind Canada's lack of domestic vaccine production capacity - which is particularly unconscionable when the publicly-owned Connaught Labs was once one of the world's leaders. And John Queally reports on Bill Gates' insistence on prioritizing big pharma's monopoly rights over the availability of vaccines worldwide, while Devi Sridhar observes that global vaccination is a must for any country to be safe from COVID-19.

- Paul Waldman writes that George Orwell underestimated the amount of hate which would underlie a turn toward fascism, as the Republicans essentially offer nothing else 24 hours a day. Alex Pareene discusses the Republicans' choice to legalize running over protestors with cars. And Eric Levitz comments that those provisions are just part of a general conservative attempt to stifle speech through both individual violence, and the power of the state.

- Finally, Kenan Malik writes that the U.S.' general philosophy of policing involves controlling the poor rather than protecting the public.