Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Juliana Kim reports on the growing wave of public health advice recommending masking in order to limit the harm from a "tripledemic" of infectious diseases. Blair Crawford reports on PSAC's rightful concern that a return-to-the-office order will avoidably expose workers and their families to circulating viruses. And Jessica Wildfire discusses how the systemic underreaction to pervasive threats can be explained as an example of normalcy bias - while pointing out how ill served we are by allowing it to dictate our actions. 

- Alan Joseph recognizes that the deaths being caused by a lack of emergency care are the result of a conscious a policy choice on the part of governments who are simultaneously ignoring public health threats, and underfunding the health care system being hit with the consequences. Tara Kiran examines the limited availability of primary care for millions of Canadians, while Audrey Provezano makes the case to shift from a single-physician model of primary care to a team approach. And Megan Ogilvie tells the story of a family forced to endure a 350-kilometer flight to get their 4-year child to a functioning ICU. 

- Lourdes Juan offers a reminder that donations to food banks don't do anything to address the underlying causes of poverty and hunger. And Jerusalem Demsas points out that homelessness is an entirely unavoidable consequence of a failure to ensure people have access to housing. 

- Lloyd Alter reviews Matt Simon's A Poison Like No Other as an essential read on the dangers of plastics (and the failure of recycling to address them). And Christy Climenhaga reports on the melting of permafrost as both a result and a cause of our climate crisis. 

- Finally, Jason Herring reports on a new Ernst and Young study confirming the obvious point that public auto insurance leads to more affordable rates, while the policy choice of leaving insurance to market forces results in brutal price-gouging.