Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

-  Michael Toole and Brendan Crabb write that COVID's impact on multiple types of cells and systems makes it particularly dangerous compared to the illnesses we're used to confronting, while Juliane Samara asks why there's no apparent anger and grief over soaring numbers of fatalities. Zeynep Tufecki discusses the importance of booster shots better targeted to new variants - as well as the concern that relatively few people are aware of their benefits. And Kenyon Wallace tracks down the massive number of Ontario emergency room shutdowns this summer which were swept under the rug by the Ford PCs.

- Jonah Fisher reports on new Oxford University research concluding that a transition to clean energy would save trillions of dollars by 2050 even without accounting for the benefits of averting a climate breakdown. Bill McGuire discusses the importance of doing everything we can to limit global warming - even as decades of fossil-fueled delay and denial (including that of the auto industry) may have pushed the 1.5 degree target out of reach. But Justine Calma reports on the World Meteorological Organization's conclusion that carbon pollution continues to soar to unprecedented levels, even as its devastating effects are seen in unprecedented disasters including extreme rainfall in Quebec and food shortages in France. And Umair Haque rightly characterizes the climate crisis as the express train to hell. 

- Meanwhile, Hannah Devlin reports on the developing awareness of the connection between air pollution, cancer and other threats to health. 

- Finally, Sonali Kolakhtar writes about Barbara Ehrenreich's contributions both in exposing the desperate precarity facing lower-income workers, and calling out the toxic positivity used to try to paper over it. And Jordan Barab writes about the effect of solidarity in ensuring that U.S. rail workers received at least some improvement in their working conditions - even in the face of callous disregard for their contributions by the CEOs raking in massive pay thanks to their work.