Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Lauren Chadwick reports on the WHO's findings that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a multi-year drop in life expectancy and undone a decade of health progress. Eric Topol and Ziyad Al-Aly examine the results of a new study showing that long COVID is linked to a large number of adverse health outcomes 3 years after an initial hospitalization. And Dan Luo et al. identify one possible mechanism by which COVID-19 may cause heart problems. 

- Amy Janzwood discusses the immense financial and environmental costs of the TMX pipeline which the Libs have chosen to prioritize over anything which could actually reduce carbon pollution. And Eric Van Rythoven notes that the spread of carbon tariffs among countries who don't share the Cons' denial of climate science would render Pierre Poilievre's anti-pricing sloganeering completely ineffective. 

- Marissa Alexander and Wade Thorhaug discuss how soaring food prices are the result of corporate control over the our food supply. And David Wainer points out that increased private equity involvement in U.S. health care has resulted in further ballooning costs in what was already a grossly unaffordable medical system.  

- Finally, Susan Jane Wright writes about the importance of taking to the streets in response to Danielle Smith's anti-democratic governance. But David Climenhaga notes that the UCP's contempt for voters includes a plan to dictate who's actually allowed to cast a ballot in order to have a say in how they're governed. And Charles Rusnell warns that the Alberta Legislature appears to be going out of its way to hire disgraced violent former police officers to control one of the most important public spaces in the province.