Saturday, February 05, 2022

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Mike Mariani writes about the difficulty people suffering from long COVID have experienced trying to have their condition recognized and treated under governments looking to diminish or deny the existence of their disease. And Hannah Devlin and Nicola Davis discuss how scientific knowledge of COVID has evolved - with the recognition of the importance of masking (which is of course only becoming all the more vital in the face of the Omicron variant) serving as one of the most important developments.

- Wendy Glauser writes that in addition to providing frontline care, health workers have been performing vital work in providing the public with accurate informaion. Omar Mosleh discusses Tara Moriarty's fight to share accurate data in the face of Scott Moe's attempt to overrule health experts. And Jason Warick talks to several political scientists who conclude that Moe's combination of science denial and support for the bigoted #FluTruxKlan is unprecedented in Canadian history.

- Danyaal Raza and Wendy Lai are hopeful that the development of an unpatented vaccine will significantly shorten the timeline to vaccinate the world - though prioritizing public health over intellectual property rights when it comes to existing vaccines remains an important part of any plan. And until it's possible to achieve global protection through vaccination, Molly Jong-Fast discusses the importance of living - and doing our best to limit the spread of COVID - one day at a time. 

- Scott Schmidt asks where Alberta (among other jurisdictions) will end up in dealing with foreseeable future COVID waves if it allows violent ignorance to carry the day now.

- Finally, Doug Cuthand rightly notes that the police deference to violent anti-vaxx occupiers demonstrates the obvious presence of white privilege. And SURJ Toronto highlights the importance of using that privilege to push for fairness and equality.

2 comments:

  1. Cuba is beating the US to it, they already have 5 vaccines, none MRNA tech so it can be stored in above freezing temptures, and they have a plan for global distribution once approved by the who.

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    1. They're certainly making key contributions to the global effort as well, though my impression was there were more significant limitations on the quantities they can deliver. I'm not sure how much of that is a result of the continued effects of the U.S. embargo, and how much is the result of CORBEVAX being better tailored to existing supply chains.

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