Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Gloria Novovic writes about the desperate need to start planning ahead to control the damage done by the COVID pandemic, rather than reacting only to calamities already in progress. Ed Yong highlights why there's no reason to minimize the effect of the coronavirus based on "incidental" infections which still impose massive costs on an overwhelmed health care system. Mary-Ann Davies et al. study the prevalence of severe outcomes in the course of South Africa's Omicron wave, and find that any change in the virus itself (rather than vaccination or other immunity rates) has produced only a 25% reduction in risk of hospitalization or death compared even to the most severe Delta wave. And Christina Frangou offers a look at the effects of long COVID on people who have continued to suffer illness and disability long after even mild initial cases. 

- Michael Osterholm and Cory Anderson call out the misleading message that stubbornly keeping schools open without taking steps to protect staff and students is a remotely plausible option. And Mickey Djuric reports that Saskatchewan's already-strained education system is being forced to carry out contact tracing responsibility abandoned by public health structures. 

- Meanwhile, Olga Khazan notes that the lack of paid sick leave and other supports is forcing people to keep dragging themselves to work while infected. Basit Mahmood points out how the combination of stagnant incomes and rising rents and prices is leaving more and more UK households destitute. And Errol Schweiser discusses how food price inflation in particular is a matter of profit-taking by large corporations with the power to control the market. 

- D.T. Cochrane examines how corporate Canada has already stopped contributing any income taxes to Canadian society to for the year. And Dan Darrah calls out the Canadian Federation of Independent Business for its relentless attacks on workers and people who rely on public services. 

- Finally, Jeff Seal, Chris Libbey and Rick Libbey discuss the importance of moving toward a just cause standard for eviction based on the recognition that housing is a human right.