Monday, December 18, 2023

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Geoffrey Johnston examines how the latest wave of COVID-19 is swamping Ontario's health care system while its cumulative effect is reducing life expectancies. Philip Moscovitch discusses the dangers of repeat COVID infections. And Zaki Arshad, Joshua Nazareth and Manish Pareek offer a reminder that the same vaccination, masking, and testing which have been vital to limiting the spread of COVID for the past three years remain so now even if they're being treated solely as individual choices rather than ongoing public health necessities. 

- Martin Lukacs interviews Eriel Deranger about what happened at COP28, with fossil fuel interests and their fully-owned politicians looking to block progress at every turn. And Binoy Kampmark points out that the end product is both non-binding, and ineffective even to the extent it were treated as having any effect (as also noted by the experts surveyed by Carolyn Gramling).

- Topher Sanders et al. expose the combination of bullying and bribery used by major rail companies to prevent the accurate reporting of worker injuries so they can avoid safety regulation and keep dangerous conditions in place. 

- Finally, Kenan Malik discusses how the hesitancy to challenge the class power of the wealthy has sapped politics of any meaningful effect. And while Rachel Cohen's interview with Brent Cebul rightly challenges the neoliberal view that the sole focus of policy development should be to gesture toward a given problem as cheaply and profitably as possible, it's worth noting the problem with trying to co-opt business interests by handing them even more money and power. 

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