Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- The Institut economique Molinari studies how COVID Zero strategies have not only kept populations healthier, but helped to preserve higher levels of freedom than plans which instead allow for avoidable community transmission. And Andrew Conway-Harris et al. find (PDF) that air filtration is extremely effective at removing COVID-19 and other airborne diseases from hospital wards. 

- Which is to say that responsible governments should be able to minimize the continued spread of COVID. But instead, Jason Warick reports on the repurposing of Saskatchewan health care providers to brace against an avoidable fourth wave, while Taz Dhaliwal highlights the rightly outraged response of doctors now being told by Scott Moe that they bear responsibility for not sufficiently countering his constant minimization of the pandemic. And Zak Vescera reports on the ballooning number of COVID cases in Saskatchewan's under-19 population. 

- Geoffrey Morgan reports on the growing concern that the massive liabilities associated with a declining oil patch will be dumped onto governments and landowners as oil companies shed idle wells. And Niciolas Van Praet reports on the attempt by fossil fuel companies to use trade agreements to prevent any transition away from new production to help avert climate disaster. 

- Michael Sean Winters discusses how more progressive taxes on the rich represent both a popular step and a smart policy choice. And Chris Dite interviews Marie Sneve Martinussen and Seher Aydar about the success of Norway's Red Party in turning class messaging into both electoral and social change. 

- Finally, Sean Isaacs writes about the encroachment of financialization on nearly every aspect of our lives, and the resulting increase in capital's control over people. And Karin Larsen reports on the underhanded tactics of one prominent Vancouver landlord in seeking to evade rent controls by setting up an artificial "utility provider" which would not be subject to any caps (while still using the threat of eviction to force the payment of its bills).