Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Alexandra Hutzler reports that even a majority of Americans seeing mask mandates lifted aren't prepared to buy the line that it's safe to stop taking basic precautions - particularly given the likelihood that the amount of one's initial exposure has a substantial impact on both immediate symptoms and the risk of developing long COVID. 

- Devi Sridhar writes that self-isolation is still a must for people who test positive for COVID - though the lack of social supports has been calculated to take that socially responsible choice away from people who don't have the means to self-fund the protection of others. And Steven Lewis offers a reminder that the failure to provide the basic building blocks of a functional society isn't for lack of resources. 

- Meanwhile, Colleen Fuller laments that we're going backwards in providing supplies of basic medications such as insulin which were once deliberately made affordable, rather than exploited to maximize profit at the expense of human health.

- Wenonah Hauter discusses how the fossil fuel sector is a job killer (as well as a planet poisoner and magnet for the obscene concentration of wealth). And Nick Pearce writes that the Moe government is entirely secretive about the amount of public money being used to keep the industry rolling in subsidies. 

- Jesse Drucker and Ben Hubbard report on the Credit Suisse data leak which has provided a new peek into the world of offshored and concealed wealth which benefits strongmen and spies at the expense of everybody else.

- Finally, Christine Mitchell writes about the role of white Christian nationalism in the #FluTruxKlan. Mitchell Thompson reports on the connection between Randy Hillier and the heavily-armed "Diagolon" group. And Jennifer Wolowic discusses the need to invest in rebuilding our democracy - particularly in light of the reality that massive sums of money can be marshaled both from within Canada and abroad to try to overthrow it.