Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Umair Haque discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has been turned into a cash cow to be extended for profit, rather than a public health emergency to be ended for the sake of people's safety. And Jay S. Kaufman notes that science alone can't fully answer a pandemic where social trust and cohesion have broken down in ways that prevent people from working toward a common end.

- Don Braid writes that both the UCP's political plans and the provincial health care system are collapsing in Alberta, while PressProgress points out the shortage of ambulances in Calgary and Edmonton as one example of how the COVID crisis is affecting the health care system as a whole. 

- Guy Queeneville reports on Scott Moe's cuts to contact tracing just as the fourth wave began to rise, while Jessie Anton reports on the Saskatchewan Health Authority's restrictions on services due to the unchecked pandemic. Zak Vescera reports on the existence of modeling showing that mandatory masking could reduce community transmission by 50%. And Jason Warick discusses why Scott Moe can't be bothered to take even that basic step to keep people healthy and safe, while Phil Tank points out the giant load of nothing that was Moe's announcement yesterday.

- Luke Savage rightly makes the case for John Horgan's government to take the lead in legislating paid sick days for all.

- Finally, Peter Kalmus writes that both halves of a "net zero emissions by 2050" target represent grossly inadequate levels of concern for the preservation of our living environment. And Umair Irfain summarizes the IPCC's main scenarios for climate change going forward - with the "middle of the road" scenario in which countries fulfill their existing commitments and cooperate somewhat on environmental goals resulting in a catastrophic 2.7 degrees of warming.