Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ed Yong offers an important look at what long COVID's "brain fog" means for the people suffering from it, while Peter Thurley discusses his personal experience with it. Mark Caro reports on the work being done - and the desperate need for more attention - in studying and treating long COVID generally. And Adam Miller discusses what it means for a large majority of Canadians to have now been infected - including the reality that some incremental immunity doesn't relieve us of the need to protect against avoidable infections and reinfections. 

- Vjosa Isai reports on the general crisis in Canadian emergency rooms as provincial governments have chosen to placed constant strain on already-struggling health care workers. But Gordon Guyatt warns against being scared into accepting privatized health services which only serve to further diminish their availability for anybody but the wealthiest few. 

- Steve Wamhoff points out the need for those with the most to pay taxes like everybody else, rather than being protected by preferential regimes won through political pay-for-play. Ben Butler and Nick Evershed report on the stark gap in pay increases between Australia's CEOs and its workers generally. And Jacob Lorinc reports on the growing recognition that sharp interest rate increases will cause a recession that mostly hits workers after capitalists have already locked in their gains. 

- Marc Fawcett-Atkinson discusses the gall of the right-wing provincial governments who didn't wait a day after accepting billions from the federal government for agriculture before spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation about supports for fertilizer efficiency. And Duncan Kinney reports on the Edmonton Police Service's plans to carry out mass arrests of counter-protesters while laying out the red carpet for the Flu Trux Klan. 

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg writes about Pierre Piolievre's predictable - if glaringly unsuccessful - attempt to pivot toward more moderate branding after spending the Conservative leadership campaign catering unabashedly to violent extremists. And Max Fawcett notes that some of his gratuitous fights - including one against any media which fails to serve as an unquestioning dispenser of his talking points - have only just begun.