Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Ezra Cheung reports on research showing the increasing severity of the Omicron BA.2 variant for children in Hong Kong, while David Axe discusses the similar pattern observed in Europe. And Jesse Feith points out the connection between long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis - though while the frame of reference may be somewhat helpful, the lack of action to deal with chronic fatigue prior to the pandemic doesn't offer any great hope that governments who are already washing their hands of long COVID will put any effort into addressing it now. 

- John Harris writes that instead of focusing narrowly on inflation or costs of living, we should be recognizing that our economic and politics structures are set up to exclude increasing numbers of people from being able to obtain the necessities of life. Lori Fox discusses how Canada is falling far short of providing needed mental health care for working-class people.

- Jacques Poitras reports on Rod Cumberland's termination as a college instructor for heresy against corporations and the chemicals they want to spray around without consideration of public or environmental health. And Ilana Cohen and Michael Mann weigh in on the need to stop relying on fossil fuel money for climate research. 

- Burgess Langshaw-Power discusses how the Libs' plan to call tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil industry to lock in several more decades of carbon pollution is doomed to failure as a measure to help avert climate breakdown. And the American Lung Association points out that a shift to electric rather than combustion vehicles would have plenty of additional benefits to health and well-being beyond the displacement of greenhouse gas emissions. 

- Finally, David Moscrop writes that the Libs' belated and inflated purchase of F-35s represents the worst of all possible worlds, wasting even more money than planned without any consideration of whether burning billions on fighter jets actually serves a meaningful need.