Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Anthony Newall et al. study the effects of the influenza vaccine - finding that each percentage point in vaccine uptake saves over a thousand U.S. lives which would otherwise have been lost to the flu and pneumonia. And Kit O'Connell discusses how people suffering from long COVID are advocating for a healthier living environment for everybody.

- Chris Hatch writes that the narrow focus on carbon taxes which dominates Canada's climate change policy discussion misses the far more important realities of a global crisis in progress. And Benjamin Shingler reports on Environmental Defence's latest study showing how the federal government continues to subsidize dirty energy, while Kendall Latimer notes that the official policy of the Saskatchewan Party remains one of strict climate denialism. 

- Daniel Otis takes note of an internal RCMP report showing that we're trending toward disaster on multiple fronts (though of course in ways that the Cons only want to exacerbate). Peter Walker writes that the U.K. Cons along with other right-wing parties are eagerly copying the Trump playbook of constant disinformation and bullying. And Abby Ferber discusses how the U.S.' bigoted right has set back racial progress by decades with a concerted attack ideas as basic as diversity and inclusion. 

- Angus Deaton writes about the lessons he's learned about the failings and frailties of capitalist orthodoxy. 

- Finally, Ian Welsh discusses the converse of the key principle that anything we can do, we can afford: when crisis hits, we can't afford anything which we've abandoned the capacity to accomplish.