Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Cory Neudorf asks that Saskatchewan not play Russian roulette with the Omicron COVID variant. Rahul Suryawanshi et al. find that any theory of hoping for protection through infection is as foolish now as ever, since Omicron itself is limited in the immunity it
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Anthony Fernandez-Castaneda et al. examine the long-term neurological and cognitive damage caused even by “mild” cases of COVID. Sally Cutler discusses the implications of the Omicron COVID variant remaining transmissible longer than previously assumed even as governments and employers are adamant about forcing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Katherine Wu warns that the worst of the Omicron COVID wave may happen even after case counts have peaked as continued spread (facilitated by people relaxing their prevention efforts) batters already-struggling health care systems. And Ingrid Torjeson discusses a new study from
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Katherine Wu calls out the wishful thinking (and deliberate neglect) behind any attempt to brand the Omicron COVID variant as “mild”. Evelyn Lazare discusses the vicious circle created as the health care workers expected to care for the sick themselves become infected in
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Climate action is someone else’s job
Kantar Public, part of an international consulting company, advises on public policy, services and communications. Analysts examined attitudes toward taking climate actions, What they found might be paraphrased as, “We know things need to change but mostly, it’s someone else’s job.”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Trevor Herriot and Cathy Holtslander write about the Saskatchewan Party’s climate position which can’t be treated as anything but implicit denialism. John Woodside points out that the Libs’ fuel regulations seem designed to lock us into decades of avoidable fossil fuel use,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There are several reasons for Jason Kenney’s enthusiasm for ‘small modular reactors’ – none of them are particularly good
Small nuclear reactors don’t make any more economic sense now than they did back in the summer of 2020 when Alberta Premier Jason Kenney took to the Internet to tout the supposed benefits of the largely undeveloped technology being promoted by Canada’s nuclear industry. Now that Mr. Kenney has taken
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Contortions of logic and promises
The BC NDP government taxes fossil fuels severely to discourage consumption by citizens. That is an appropriate policy choice but the same government turns around and offers huge public subsidies to producers with the aim of increasing production and leading politicians pretend that is free of environmental harm since the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – CBC News reports that Saskatchewan’s children’s hospital is among the health care facilities with an internal outbreak, while Laura Sciarpelletti talks to some of the parents begging the provincial government to limit transmission in schools. – Moira Wyton reports on British Columbia’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Madhukar Pai and Manu Prakash discuss how artificially limited vaccination is allowing COVID variants to get the jump on any attempt to protect public health, while Felicia Ceban et al. find that widespread fatigue and cognitive impairment are among the prices of letting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – CTV reports on Alberta Health Services’ recognition that tens of thousands of the province’s residents project to suffer from long COVID. Alex McKeen reports on Ontario’s missing health care workers as the Omicron variant runs rampant, while Enzo Dimatteo examines the potentially catastrophic
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Kenney’s New Modus Operandi: Goodbye Peter Lougheed; Hello Donald Trump
There was a time when Jason Kenney pretended to be the modern-day manifestation of Peter Lougheed, notwithstanding his conviction that Lougheed’s programs were akin to “neo-Stalinist make-work projects.” He’s since dropped the charade. He no longer pretends to be anything other than what he is. A Trump admirer. Recently he’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ryan Cooper highlights the reasons to be careful about any COVID minimizers seeking to declare the Omicron variant as too mild to cause problems for our health care system. Ryan Patrick Jones reports on the choice of Ontario (and other provinces) to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Dan Diamond reports on the shortage of health care workers as the fifth wave of COVID crests in the U.S., while Carl O’Donnell and Ahmed Aboulenein report on the escalating number of children being hospitalized with the coronavirus. Robyn Urback warns that our
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Patrick Wood and Mary Louise Kelly write that we still need to be managing COVID risk budgets to avoid contributing more to community transmission than necessary. Helen Branswell discusses some lessons learned through the pandemic so far. And Morgan Lowrie reports on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andre Picard discusses the need for people to avoid giving up in the battle to protect against the worst effects of a pandemic run amok. And Yasmine Ghania highlights what people with a positive rapid test need to do next. But contrary to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Michela Antonelli et al. study the disease profile of post-vaccination COVID, concluding that full vaccination helps to reduce both the number and duration of symptoms. But Elizabeth Yuko points out that the result is still a significant risk of debilitating long-term conditions.
Continue readingNorthern Currents –: Conservative Premier Scott Moe sides with Big Oil campaign, ignores the climate crisis
Regina city councillors proposed legislation to ban advertisements from oil and gas industry. The industry responded with an astroturfing campaign. Here we have yet another example of right-wing politicians supporting powerful oil and gas corporations. These corporations are so powerful that they can shape narratives and create false populist movements.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Nick Dunne interviews Colin Furness about the impact the Omicron COVID variant figures to have in schools – and the need to hold off on reopening after a holiday which has included grossly insufficient precautions. Alyson Kruger asks whether people are learning
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Chomsky’s Lessons from 2021
Yanis Varoufakis spoke to Noam Chomsky, at DiEM25, about what 2021 has taught us. In a nutshell: the wealthy puts profits over people to their own detriment (e.g. patent rights over vaccines, which provoked mutations) and will only help with climate change if they can profit without taking risks. We
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