Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Tom Frieden offers a primer on what we know about long COVID - and what we should be doing to avoid it. And Eric Topol interviews Linsey Marr about the importance of clean air to alleviate the spread of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. 

- Robert Booth and Pamela Duncan report that the increased privatization of care homes in England have resulted in nearly a third falling short of basic standards of hygiene and care for dementia patients. 

- David Sirota and Andrew Perez point out that the airline mess in the U.S. was fully anticipated in advance of the holiday season - and that Southwest Airlines in particular proceeded with a massive dividend payment rather than putting a nickel toward keeping its operations functional. And Adam Johnson discusses how the nightmare for air travelers reflects the broader work by giant corporations to ensure people aren't able to raise their problems with anybody other than powerless frontline workers:

We are conditioned to get mad at the human face we see before us, the “representative” of the company who personally profits nothing from our purchase. We are conditioned to get mad at the waiter when our food is late (and penalize this “bad service” with a bad tip) when the vast majority of the time it’s due to understaffing by a cheapskate boss. We are conditioned to get upset with the enforcer of arbitrary rules at a hotel checkout, despite it not being their rule at all. We are conditioned to be hostile to the very people we should have the most solidarity with. 

... 

Those who actually make the decisions remain protected like mob bosses, gently nestled between layers of middle management, lawyers, and marketing reps, impossible to reach by design. They have addresses and homes and phone numbers, you just don’t have access to them. And if you did, this would be stalking, and you’d likely get a visit from a police officer. Meanwhile they have all your information, and can hound you with credit agencies and just randomly steal your money. To the extent they face consequences, it’s a pointless fine that’s factored into their cost-benefit calculations at the beginning of the year... 

... 

(B)y design, the only humans we interface with are those who, by definition, are the lowest on the ladder, the least paid, and least protected: The cashier, the ticket agent, the flight attendant, the poor call center punching bag. So people yell at them, because there is no one else. They hate you back, and worker solidarity further erodes. We all grow more atomized, angry, powerless, and bitter. And the system works as intended.

- Agence France-Presse discusses the connections between the climate breakdown and increasingly severe winter storms.

- Finally, Craig Silverman and Ruth Talbot expose some of Google's ad network - including its complicity in fraud and disinformation by protecting the identities of bad actors using it for their antisocial ends.