Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robin Gauld, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Dean, University of Otago

New Zealand’s budget brings a significant funding injection for health and disability services, amounting to around a 9% increase. It is the most substantial increase for the health sector in some time, and in this regard, aligns with the government’s 2019 well-being budget.

Overall, the budget provides an additional NZ$4.3 billion over the next four years. Most of that new investment is a welcome NZ$3.92 billion for the country’s 20 district health boards, many of which have been in perpetual deficit and haven’t received enough funding to cater for the demand on regional hospitals and community health care.

In this sense, the budget provides a long overdue catch up for the health sector, and it patches up the backlog COVID-19 created for elective medical procedures.

But unfortunately it misses the opportunity to make bigger, more systemic changes. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the current regional approach to health care isn’t good enough to deal with a nationwide threat. So a more visionary budget would have overhauled the health system by supplementing district health boards with a central, nationwide focus.

Read more: COVID-19 has now reached New Zealand. How prepared is it to deal with a pandemic?

Key budget health initiatives

Each district health board is a local health system responsible for planning and funding services within a geographic area, including public hospitals, disability support services, public health and primary care.

The NZ$3.92 billion boost for district health boards is intended to “improve financial sustainability and clinical performance” as well as provide for population ageing and growth, wage increases and inflation.

NZ$282.5 million over the next three years is to provide around 153,000 elective and planned surgeries, radiology scans and specialist appointments that have been delayed by the COVID-19 lockdown. It will also cater for people on waiting lists – a perpetual problem.

NZ$125 million over four years is for other COVID-19 related cost increases – presumably personal protective equipment and additional testing, treatment and contact-tracing. And there’s an additional almost NZ$850 million for disability support to relieve growing pressure on the sector and improve access to services such as home-based care.

Some of the finer detail is yet to be worked out. Firstly, the finance and health ministers said district health boards will be held to account for their performance with the new spending. This means those with deficits will be expected to improve their financial standing. This implies they will be under close government monitoring.

Clinical services will similarly be expected to show improvements in the number of procedures and patients coming through. In this regard, the budget provides more funds for more of the same. Hopefully this will bring improvements for the thousands of patients who languish on waiting lists or miss out on treatment because their condition has not yet deteriorated enough to be treated in the public sector.

COVID-19 and what still needs to be fixed

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted shortcomings in New Zealand’s health system, some of which are yet to be addressed.

Initially, medical staff in each region worked to different protocols for COVID-19 contact tracing and testing, and it was difficult to combine the data in a central database. While this has now been fixed as part of the country’s pandemic response, the budget doesn’t tackle any of these deeper issues.

The budget could have been an opportunity to forge ahead with much needed health system changes. I’ve suggested elsewhere that district health boards should be abolished and replaced by 20 hospital managers (preferably qualified health professionals) who work as a team. They would run regional hospitals, but be accountable to the Ministry of Health.

Their job should be working collaboratively and strategically, taking a national approach on any issues, including identifying and disseminating best practice across the sector. At the moment, there is no way of achieving this as the district health boards largely work in silos.

Read more: Why New Zealand needs to continue decisive action to contain coronavirus

Funds should be allocated through a local alliance between primary care practitioners, hospital managers and other providers. This would increase capacity to fund innovations in care, such as investment in virtual consultation technology, which GPs have had to use during the COVID-19 lockdown. The budget was quiet on funding to allow GPs to work in more flexible ways – but the pandemic has highlighted considerable cracks and needs here.

Any such changes should be guided by two initiatives, at relatively low cost. First, investment in “operational excellence”, which research shows leads to higher overall performance. For health, this means better financial performance, quality of care and patient outcomes.

At the moment we continue to invest in a sector that undervalues management development. For this reason, we can expect future budgets to replicate the “catch up, patch up” approach.

Second, we need a national clinical leadership initiative. As with the first point, we have long undervalued the potential for our health professionals to provide leadership.

Studies show that medical services and hospitals led by physicians perform better. There have been failed attempts in New Zealand to develop a leadership initiative, but it is time to revisit this and train medical professionals to be excellent, both as clinicians and managers.

Stay in touch with The Conversation’s coverage from New Zealand experts by signing up for our weekly NZ newsletter – delivered to you each Wednesday.

– ref. New Zealand’s ‘catch up, patch up’ health budget misses the chance for a national overhaul – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-catch-up-patch-up-health-budget-misses-the-chance-for-a-national-overhaul-138509

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larisa Labzin, Research Fellow, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland

Nearly two million “rapid” antibody tests imported into Australia have been declared useless for determining whether someone has been exposed to the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Testing by the Doherty Institute revealed many of the tests accurately detected COVID-19 antibodies in just 56.9% of cases – not much better than flipping a coin.

Antibody tests are important for establishing who has had the virus, especially because many people infected seem to show no symptoms. There is also hope rapid tests could be used to diagnose active COVID-19, as the tests would be much quicker and less invasive than the current swabs, known as PCR tests.

But it’s hard to make one that works. It’s difficult to craft a test that is specific enough to detect just SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), and not other similar viruses. More importantly for diagnosis of active cases, it’s difficult to craft a test that is sensitive enough to detect SARS-CoV-2 antibodies early on during infection.

Antibodies tell us who has had the virus

An antibody is a small, Y-shaped molecule that binds to specific structures on viruses, called antigens. When these antibodies bind to the antigen on the virus, they can stop the viruses entering our cells and replicating.

Our immune system only makes antibodies to a virus we are infected with. Each antibody is unique, but we can have many different antibodies that bind to the same antigen. After we clear an infection, our immune system keeps a small number of these antibodies circulating in our blood. That way, if we get infected with the same virus again our immune system can ramp up production of the relevant antibodies.

With social restrictions being eased in many countries, including Australia, it will be crucial to know who has already had the virus. But one Italian study found 43% of people who tested positive for COVID-19 had shown no symptoms. However, this is a pre-print study and has not been peer-reviewed, so the results should be treated with caution.

Read more: Why do some people with coronavirus get symptoms while others don’t?

Accurate antibody tests can help us establish exactly how widespread asymptomatic infection is, helping authorities assess the true spread of the virus.

How do antibody tests work?

Antibody tests can also help scientists understand what a good immune response to the virus looks like. This is something we don’t yet fully understand, but we need to know for developing a vaccine.

To develop an antibody test, researchers choose a piece of the virus (a specific antigen) and make it in the lab. We can then use the antigen to fish out the antibodies specific to it, out of all the antibodies in human blood. In the laboratory, these tests can also determine how many antibodies against the virus are present in the blood.

Read more: Antibody tests: to get a grip on coronavirus, we need to know who’s already had it

Rapid antibody tests work more like a pregnancy test. Using these tests in the field involves taking a pinprick sample of a patient’s blood. If the blood contains antibodies that bind to the specific antigen, the result is positive. If not, the result is negative.

But for these tests to be useful, we need to be able to trust the results. The choice of antigen matters for both the sensitivity and the specificity of the antibody test.

Tests need to be more sensitive and specific

The sensitivity of the antibody test is important for avoiding “false negatives”, in which the patient’s blood appears free of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 despite having previously been infected with it.

Therefore, the antigen chosen by test developers has to be a piece of the virus that the body makes significant numbers of antibodies against. Additionally, because our immune system has to make antibodies from scratch, it takes our immune system up to two weeks to make new antibodies.

So early on during infection, when we want to use rapid antibody tests for diagnosing COVID-19, we need a highly sensitive test. Otherwise we might be actively infected with the virus, but we could return a negative result on the antibody test because we haven’t made enough antibodies yet.

Read more: Can you get the COVID-19 coronavirus twice?

The specificity of the test is important for avoiding “false positives”. Sometimes, viruses can have very similar antigens, particularly if they are closely related. So SARS-CoV-2 antigens might be similar to antigens from SARS1, or to the common cold coronaviruses. A test that’s not specific enough may return a positive result to a different virus.

Think of it like trying to identify different types of fruit. Its easy to distinguish between an apple and an orange. But determining whether we have an orange or a mandarin is much harder. Our test has to be sensitive to more than just colour, shape, and texture of the fruit’s skin. We would need to look for a characteristic unique to the orange, such as the roundness of the orange, or how easy it is to peel the skin off.

The antigen used for the test must therefore be unique to SARS-CoV-2. Otherwise we might think someone has been exposed to the virus when they have only suffered a common cold.

The tests imported by the Australian federal government weren’t sensitive enough. The Doherty Institute found the tests had a high chance of producing a false negative, though the likelihood of producing a false positive was lower. The Institute also found the accuracy of the tests was much lower than what the companies selling the test claimed, highlighting the need for independent evaluation of these claims.

The pressure of the pandemic means the demand for these tests was high, and the government took a gamble and bought them before they had been properly checked.

The good news is that new antibody tests are being developed rapidly, and one has been independently approved in the UK.

But until we are confident of the sensitivity and specificity of the antigens used in a given antibody test, we can’t use them for diagnosing new COVID-19 cases, tracking the spread of COVID-19, or understanding the immune response.

– ref. Why can’t we use antibody tests for diagnosing COVID-19 yet? – https://theconversation.com/why-cant-we-use-antibody-tests-for-diagnosing-covid-19-yet-138519

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Wake, Program Manager, Journalism, RMIT University

The closure of the Australian arm of the youth-focused news organisation, BuzzFeed, is more evidence the advertising-supported media landscape is broken.

It’s a sad end for a news organisation that launched in 2014 with an ambition to shake up Australia’s hyper-concentrated media market.

Here are nine things Australians who care about journalism, and the state of our democracy, should know.

1. BuzzFeed is not the only online outlet to flounder here

Some, such as HuffPost, started strong but then struggled. Others, such as The Global Mail and The Hoopla, failed pretty quickly.

Read more: The closure of AAP is yet another blow to public interest journalism in Australia

But other digital offerings are surviving: these include Crikey, which came along in 2000, Mamamia (2007), The Conversation (2011), Guardian Australia (2013), The Saturday Paper (2014) and The New York Times (2017).

2. By grouping popular viral content and excellent journalism together, BuzzFeed created a disconnect

Due to the co-location of its popular and quality journalism, at the same time as BuzzFeed was being nominated for Pulitzer Prizes in the United States and the Walkley Awards in Australia, it also struggled with trust. The 2019 Canberra University Digital News Report survey found BuzzFeed was the country’s least trusted news brand.

3. BuzzFeed had been on shaky ground for a while

BuzzFeed cut about 200 staff globally in January 2019 amid a worldwide savings push. The Australian arm of BuzzFeed lost 11 of its 40 staff at the time.

4. BuzzFeed Australia has been home to many high-profile journalists

Since launching under founding editor Simon Crerar, it has employed its fair share of talented (and sometimes controversial) journalists who have broken significant stories and covered issues in innovative, unusual ways.

Lane Sainty was nominated for a Walkley Award for her coverage of the marriage equality debate, while Gina Rushton’s work on abortion is seen as contributing to last year’s decriminalisation in NSW.

Before recently running into trouble at the Financial Times, Mark Di Stefano was noted for his innovative coverage of Australian politics, including interviewing former foreign minister Julie Bishop by emoji.

5. It needed advertising dollars to survive

Like other digital natives, BuzzFeed relied on advertisements for its funding. It also leaned heavily on digital platforms (such as Google and Facebook) for website referrals.

Read more: Newsrooms not keeping up with changing demographics, study suggests

BuzzFeed used social media posts extensively as a means of reaching audiences, and has over 2.5 million Facebook “likes”. As Australia’s 2019 Digital Platforms Inquiry reported, when Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritise posts from family and friends, BuzzFeed Australia really felt the change.

6. It went after younger readers

Although BuzzFeed attracted sneers from traditional news lovers for its fun “listicles” and viral videos on social media, it set out to attract a youth market.

It also won respect from peers in traditional media outlets.

Even Australian journalism royalty Laurie Oakes noted in a speech at the University of Sydney: “I’m not going to complain if cat videos support serious journalistic aspirations.”

7. But those younger readers didn’t pay

There’s an old news adage that audiences will take more of what they need to know from those that give them what they want to know.

By providing non-news content alongside their journalism, BuzzFeed won attention from youth audiences to stories in a way other news outlets couldn’t.

Unfortunately, audiences prefer to pay for steaming services rather than news, as the 2019 Digital News Report found.

8. BuzzFeed covered stories that others would not do, or did them in a way that others would not

It recognised the importance of covering federal politics for young people. And it broke major stories, such as former employment minister Michaelia Cash’s office tipping off the media about union raids.

Although this also came at a cost. It reached an out of court settlement with former Labor MP Emma Husar in 2019, after she sued BuzzFeed for defamation.

It should not have been as innovative as it was, but BuzzFeed also specifically employed Indigenous journalists Allan Clarke and Amy McQuire to cover Indigenous issues.

9. This is the last thing Australia needs

As many noted on Twitter as the news broke, the last thing Australia needs right now is fewer media outlets, especially those that focus on stories overlooked by everyone else.

On days like today, we should be mindful that recent parliamentary and government inquiries have recommended other ways of supporting independent journalism.

These include adequate funding for public broadcasting, expanding tax deductible provisions for donations to media outlets and forcing Google and Facebook to compensate media outlets for using their content.

If we don’t figure out how to pay for strong independent journalism in Australia, our nation will most certainly be the loser.

– ref. 9 reasons you should be worried about BuzzFeed Australia closing – https://theconversation.com/9-reasons-you-should-be-worried-about-buzzfeed-australia-closing-138610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Wilson, Associate Professor in Education, University of Sydney

After weeks of remote learning due to COVID-19, many school students in New South Wales began a staggered return to classrooms this week. Students in other states, such as some in Queensland, were also back in the classroom from Monday.

Others like Victoria are weeks away from returning. Premier Daniel Andrews said some students (in prep, years 1 and 2, and years 11 and 12) will go back to school on May 26. And Western Australia’s Premier Mark McGowan announced all school students in the state must return to the classroom from May 18.

We surveyed more than 10,000 public school teachers in NSW to find out how they felt about being at school at the end of term one, their thoughts on remote learning and feelings about returning to school.

Our survey – with responses from April 17 to May 10 – showed fewer than one in four teachers felt safe working on the school site at the end of term one. But nearly 95% felt safe working from home.

During the school holidays, when the survey began, only 13% of teachers reported feeling happy to continue working in direct contact with children and colleagues.

So, has the flattening of the curve has been enough to reassure teachers it is now safe to work with students and colleagues in schools?

Read more: ‘I have never felt so frightened’: Australia’s coronavirus schools messaging must address teacher concerns

Anxiety about being in the classroom

At the end of term one and the beginning of term two in NSW, many teachers were delivering online lessons from their classrooms to students at home, as well as to smaller numbers of students who continued to attend school.

Almost all these teachers felt pressured to continue working on the school site.

One teacher said:

As an older teacher with an older husband at home who has compromised lungs, I feel very anxious about being at school. I do not appreciate, after teaching in the public system for 40 years, being treated as a guinea pig and a political scapegoat.

Although teachers found remote learning difficult, more than 95% agreed it was needed to control the outbreak. More than 60% felt it would have been beneficial to introduce remote learning earlier.

More than 60% of teachers reported high levels of anxiety due to risks posed by the virus. One teacher said about returning to school:

I worry about teacher health if we return to face-to-face learning. My health condition has changed recently, and my anxiety about potentially having to return to school is increasing.

Much of the argument for reopening schools has focused on children being less likely to fall ill from the virus than adults. But many teachers argue that belies the fact children can be infected and transmit the virus.

As one teacher told us:

Students have contact with adults, and students can be carriers. It is ludicrous to expect teachers to return to work and put themselves and their families at risk. It is also ludicrous to ask teachers to be teaching effectively on site, when their stress levels will be going through the roof with fear of exposure to the virus.

Many said schools needed better protective equipment. In the lead-up to remote learning, schools had not been provided with masks or gloves. Many schools said they didn’t have enough soap or hand sanitiser.

We had no sanitiser, no soap and minimal toilet paper. We were not provided masks, gloves or any protective gear. Teachers had to buy their own hand soap for staff rooms. As time went on we had less and less. With the shopping centres emptying while we were working, we were not even able to buy supplies ourselves. The conditions are disgraceful.

One teacher said:

If protective equipment [masks and gloves] and regular cleaning by an external service were provided as well as sanitiser and soap, I feel it would be safe to have students back on a reduced timetable if needed.

Teachers’ concerns for their students

More than 80% of teachers felt unprepared for remote learning and faced a steep learning curve. But more than 80% reported being well supported by colleagues and school executives.

Overall, around 70% felt the arrangements were an adequate substitute given the circumstances, but only 25% were confident their students were learning well.

Read more: Schools are moving online, but not all children start out digitally equal

To support families with limited online resources, more than one-third of public school teachers printed and delivered pen and paper packages to students.

More than 80% were particularly worried about students with special needs, many of whom are at higher risk from the disease and also vulnerable to educational disruption.

One teacher said:

Most of my students have very limited access to internet […] most rarely make contact and are clearly struggling to engage in work.

Most teachers (80%) felt they were well resourced to teach remotely. But only about one-third felt their students were well resourced at home. Some 40% were clear many students were not properly resourced, and about 25% were unsure.

About half of the teachers felt frustrated by insufficient resources and daily technical difficulties.

An upside to this education disruption?

Although teachers faced many challenges, the majority agreed the pandemic response had also had some positive outcomes.

Nearly 90% agreed there was an up-skilling in digital and online education. Large proportions also agreed the pandemic had created more time for families to connect, communicate and work together, more teacher collaboration and greater community respect for teachers.

Finally, perhaps surprisingly, more than 60% agreed the epidemic had created a positive disruption to the current school system. It seems a majority of teachers have been waiting for a dramatic shift to their work. COVID-19 might not have been what they were expecting but many were glad something had changed.

I think this whole situation is an excellent opportunity […] to highlight the reasons behind the inequities that are coming to light. My own experience has been made more positive due to extremely supportive and amazing school executive staff.

– ref. ‘We had no sanitiser, no soap and minimal toilet paper’: here’s how teachers feel about going back to the classroom – https://theconversation.com/we-had-no-sanitiser-no-soap-and-minimal-toilet-paper-heres-how-teachers-feel-about-going-back-to-the-classroom-138600

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Associate Professor for the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has won global admiration for her personal style. But how will Kiwis judge her government’s performance at the ballot-box in September?

A major factor in that decision will be how well today’s budget is received – and how well it achieves its stated aim of “responding, recovering and rebuilding” after COVID-19.

If she who was recently judged “the most effective leader on the planet” gets dumped in the coronavirus fallout, then what are the chances for Donald, Boris or Scott?

Late last year, finance minister Grant Robertson would have been expecting that May 2020 would see an optimistic Well-being Budget Mark 2.

Instead, it’s turned into his “rainy day budget”, as he abandons a conservative net public debt target of 20% of GDP. Debt is now projected to rise to 53.6% by 2023, as the government borrows to invest in jobs and runs deficits until at least 2024.

But budgets are political, not just technical, documents. With New Zealand’s general election still scheduled for September 19, the question remains the same: pandemic or no pandemic, will this budget help Labour win a second term in office?

Read more: Past pandemics show how coronavirus budgets can drive faster economic recovery

International observers were entranced by Ardern’s leadership after the March 2019 terrorist attack in Christchurch. But, while support for her and her party surged, this was only temporary. By December, the centre-right National Party was polling at levels that would see them form the next government.

Then the pandemic hit, and New Zealand went into strict lockdown in late March. A leaked poll a month later put Labour on 55%, boosted by popular trust in the government’s decisive response to COVID-19.

But, like last year’s post-Christchurch surge, we should not assume this one will last either.

The economic crunch could flatten support for Ardern’s government by the time the election draws near. Budget 2020 is therefore critical to the maintenance of public confidence in the present government’s stewardship at a time of deep uncertainty.

Business confidence, which had dropped in late 2017 simply because Labour took office, understandably “plummeted” in April while the country was in lockdown.

It’s harder for governments to win elections when the economy is tanking, even if the cause of the recession has arisen offshore. A sitting government can claim credit for the bounce-back when it comes, if they have led a credible plan.

But the projections are bad – as they would be regardless of who’s in government. Crucially, unemployment is forecast to peak at 9.8% in September this year, right on time for the election.

So, is Robertson’s fiscal injection going where it’s most needed? New spending targets public health, housing and trades training, and the worst-affected industries and regions reliant on international tourism. But the opposition will attack Labour on its priorities.

Assuming that COVID-19 cases continue to decline, and without a deadly second wave, by the election public attention will have turned from disease control towards the genuine pain caused by unemployment, bankruptcies and reduced incomes.

Labour will need to maintain New Zealanders’ confidence that it is doing the best for economic recovery, especially in supporting businesses, while also keeping the virus out of the community. Among the electorate, however, there may be two schools of thought about the desirability of change to a centre-right government led by the National Party.

First, there is an old refrain in New Zealand that National is the party of sound economic management, while Labour is a spendthrift. This belief is not consistent with historical evidence. Principles of fiscal discipline are now well embedded in New Zealand. Both major parties are now fiscally conservative, but not inflexibly so. For example, National prudently ran deficits to support recovery after the global financial crisis.

Read more: Beyond travel, a trans-Tasman bubble is an opportunity for Australia and NZ to reduce dependence on China

But this is about political perception, not fiscal performance. National leader Simon Bridges was whistling the party chorus well before budget day. And in his post-budget speech he zeroed in on government borrowing amounting to $NZ80,000 per household, and the burden on future generations to repay it: “That’s equivalent to a second mortgage on every house.”

If such scepticism about Labour’s economic management prevails at the ballot-box, we could see a change of government.

Jacinda Ardern may be first-name-only popular overseas, but under New Zealand’s finely balanced proportional system she only just won a coalition majority at the previous election.

An alternative school of thought is that during economic recovery it’s unwise to dump a sitting government, provided they are doing basically the right things. Don’t change horses in mid-stream – especially when the stream is running rough. In late April, 87% of Kiwis approved of the government’s response to the pandemic.

If “the team of five million” gets behind Labour’s economic recovery plan as it did for the disease-control plan, then Ardern could form another government after the election.

But a lot could go wrong in the meantime. Budget 2020 is just one risky step on a rocky political path ahead.

– ref. Will New Zealand’s $50 billion budget boost Jacinda Ardern’s chance of being re-elected? – https://theconversation.com/will-new-zealands-50-billion-budget-boost-jacinda-arderns-chance-of-being-re-elected-138419

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute

At almost 10% of gross domestic product, and a much larger per cent of government spending, Australia’s fiscal response to the COVID-19 crisis has been one of the biggest in the world.

The government is spending an average of A$26 billion a month on programs that didn’t exist in February.

To put that in perspective, before COVID-19 the government’s total average monthly expenditure this financial year was going to be $42 billion.

While far from perfect, these emergency measures have been successful at supporting the incomes of many households and businesses.

But, as this chart shows, each and every one will be gone by the end of October, making October a very dangerous time for businesses and for the economy.

In his address to parliament on Tuesday, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg spoke of a return to work as restrictions were eased.

But he noted that any new outbreaks of COVID-19 could see restrictions re-imposed at a loss of more than $4 billion per week to the economy.

Even if things go to plan, the harsh reality is that big parts of the economy are still likely to be doing less than they should for some time yet.

Most of the world has not fared as well as Australia in limiting deaths and the spread of the virus, which means global economic activity and demand will be weak for some time.

Businesses and consumers are likely to be cautious. Many will find themselves financially challenged because their loan and rent obligations were deferred rather than removed during the crisis.

Australia’s population growth will be much slower because of the reduction in temporary migration, hitting consumer-facing businesses and the broader economy.

Against this backdrop, the sudden withdrawal of massive government spending will leave an enormous hole in economy activity and the incomes of business and households.

The chart below shows that huge amounts of government support (more than 25% of gross domestic product) scheduled to vanish by the end of October.

It’s a recipe for a second downturn.

A much better approach would be to remove the measures slowly.

JobKeeper could be wound back in line with the recovery of individual businesses.

Reassessing eligibility after most physical distancing restrictions have been removed, particularly if the health situation is well controlled, seems sensible.

Support should end early for some, late for others

If the revenues of some businesses rebound to close to pre-coronavirus levels, they could come off JobKeeper early, before the September deadline.

But if the revenues of others remain weak because their operations are still constrained by health restrictions, the government could consider extending their JobKeeper payments beyond September.

Read more: That estimate of 6.6 million Australians on JobKeeper, it tells us how it can be improved

Targeting support to the firms that need it most in this way would be a better use of taxpayers’ money – and it would help stop the economy falling off a “cliff” in late October.

The JobSekeer supplement could also be phased out more slowly than the government currently plans.

JobSeeker should stay higher than it was

The treasurer should settle on a new level of income support – lower than JobSeeker with the supplement but probably $75 to $100 a week better than JobSeeker without the supplement – so that people on it are spared significant financial distress while searching for work.

It could also announce a range of measures to boost demand in the danger zones that will be created by supports coming off.

There are plenty of good options.

• one-off cash payments to households, which we know have boosted spending

• more spending on mental health services or programs to help disadvantaged students catch up on learning lost

• infrastructure spending on shovel-ready projects with good returns to the community including social housing, roads and school maintenance

Debt will need to be managed over the medium term, but it shouldn’t constrain the government from implementing the policies needed to drive recovery.

On Wednesday the Office of Financial Management unloaded $19 billion of new 10-year bonds in the biggest bond sale in Australian history after receiving bids for more than twice that many.

Read more: More than a rate cut: behind the Reserve Bank’s three point plan

It will pay an interest rate of 1.025%, which is less than the rate of inflation.

Transitioning the economy from emergency settings to business as usual will not be easy, but there’s no imperative to do it suddenly.

– ref. What’ll happen when the money’s snatched back? Our looming coronavirus support cliff – https://theconversation.com/whatll-happen-when-the-moneys-snatched-back-our-looming-coronavirus-support-cliff-138527

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, University of Melbourne

After all the forecasts and speculation, now we know the worst.

Today’s numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics lay out the catastrophic impact of COVID-19 on the Australian labour market.

Total hours worked fell 9.2% – in just one month, between March and April.

The scale and speed are difficult to comprehend.

By comparison, in the major recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, hours worked fell by 6% – but after 18 months.

Percentage fall in hours worked

Women have been hurt more than men, losing 11.5% of the hours worked in March, compared to men who lost 7.5%.

Predictions of much bigger job losses for the young than the old have been proved correct, with workers aged 15 to 24 losing about 11% of employment compared to 3.4% for those aged 25 to 54, and 4.3% for the over 55s.

Queensland and NSW have so far fared better than other states.

Percentage fall in hours worked by state

The official rate of unemployment in April 2020 rose to 6.2%. This is the highest rate since July 2015.

It doesn’t seem a big rise amid talk of a new great depression, but this is one of those times when you need to read the fine print.

Read more: The Reserve Bank thinks the recovery will look V-shaped. There are reasons to doubt it

To calculate its official rate the Australian Bureau of Statistics follows International Labor Organisation conventions in classifying employment and unemployment.

These classify as employed anyone who worked zero hours but was still being paid or who believed they had a job to go back to.

Much worse than it looks, and the bureau says so

This is important because the JobKeeper scheme means many workers in Australia fit these categories. It makes a difference.

For this reason, the bureau has provided an adjusted rate of unemployment which counts these workers as unemployed.

It puts our unemployment rate at 11.7% in April, up from 5.2% in March.

It is more in line with what we have been seeing in Canada and the United States.

Unemployment rates, January 2019 to April 2020

Under-employment is also an important part of the story. Workers who kept their jobs are now much less likely to be working the hours they want.

Between March and April the rate of underemployment (working fewer hours than wanted) jumped from 9.8% to 13.7%.

Read more: What we missed while we looked away — the growth of long‐term unemployment

And many workers have also withdrawn completely from looking for work.

In the past month the labour force participation rate fell by 2.5 percentage points.

Again, women have been hurt more than men, with an extra 2.9% of women out of the labour force compared to an extra 2.1% for men.

Statistically, these people have vanished. They are not employed, but they are not counted as unemployed because they say they are no longer available for work.

– ref. Were it not for JobKeeper, unemployment would be 11.7%, up from 5.2% in one month. Here’s how today’s numbers panned out – https://theconversation.com/were-it-not-for-jobkeeper-unemployment-would-be-11-7-up-from-5-2-in-one-month-heres-how-todays-numbers-panned-out-138268

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Carland, Director, Bachelor of Global Studies, Monash University

Generally in Australia, we all get along pretty well and feel good about our society.

Studies show we have a strong “social cohesion index,” which has remained relatively stable for the past seven years.

But we cannot take this for granted, especially if the coronavirus pandemic also leads to a recession.

In the context of COVID-19, Australia has seen its politicians take quick and decisive action to protect our health and our economy. But in the flurry of recent press conferences from state and federal leaders, social cohesion has been dangerously neglected.

We already have racism in Australia

The advent of coronavirus has lead to disturbing reports of racism in Australia, including accounts of Asian Australians being spat on, verbally abused and bashed.

The Australian Human Rights Commission says it recorded more complaints under the Racial Discrimination Act in February than at any time over the previous 12 months.

While complaints have remained within the high end of the normal range, since the start of February, one-third of all racism complaints made to the commission have been COVID-related.

Even before coronavirus, we were already seeing worrying examples of racism in Australia.

Last year, one in three NSW and Victorian school children reported being on the receiving end of racial discrimination from other kids.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has found a marked increase in the number of more serious incidents of anti-Semitism. In 2019, 40% of respondents to the Scanlon survey reported negative or very negative attitudes towards Muslims.

Far-right extremism is also on the rise, with ASIO warning small cells of people are meeting to salute Nazi flags.

Current levels of racism could get worse

None of this is good. What’s even more troubling is that it has the potential to balloon into something far worse in the near future, thanks to the COVID-precipitated economic downturn.

We know this from past experience. Economic downturn has been linked to an increase in racial discrimination again and again and again.

More precisely, it leads to scapegoating. Economic downturns precipitate scapegoating, because struggling people are looking specifically for someone, not just something, to blame. Often, that blame falls on ethnic minorities and immigrants.

Read more: Pandemic dents Australians’ views of both China and the United States

Lawrence University psychologist Peter Glick is an expert on prejudice and discrimination. He says one of the main reasons people blame ethnic minorities is because it’s psychologically more appealing to do that than blame one’s own group, or accept that something happened outside of one’s control.

Indeed, accepting events that severely impact our lives (like recessions) are the result of natural forces (like an organically occurring virus) reinforces our feeling of a lack of control. And feeling a lack of control is arguably the defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scapegoating is not haphazard

But blaming a group of people means action can be taken, often against them.

We may even be able to predict which ethnic minority groups are particularly vulnerable to scapegoating in these situations.

Scapegoating in this scenario is not haphazard. It focuses on specific type of ethnic minority – those that are perceived to be successful, but unintegrated or competitive with the dominant group.

So, ethnic minorities perceived as poor and unintegrated are less likely to be on the receiving end of blame and thus discrimination. It is the prosperous but untrusted minority we will accuse.

Read more: Before coronavirus, China was falsely blamed for spreading smallpox. Racism played a role then, too

In recent times, there was an increase in racial prejudice in places like Italy and Britain during economic downturns such as the Great Recession of the 2000s.

Looking further back in history, there is the horrifying and violent treatment of Jewish people in Nazi Germany and Armenians in Ottoman-era Turkey, both of which occurred in the context of economic downturns.

Of course, it is ridiculous to suggest economic downturns are the sole cause of genocide, or that we are heading in such a monstrous direction.

But it is also unwise to ignore the repeated lessons about the impact of recession on relationships between ethnic groups in society.

We need specific support for Chinese Australians

In Australia, the historical precedence of the recession-racism link, coupled with our current struggles with race issues, means our nation is primed for strife.

We are in a moment of collective pause and planning. But in amongst the thinking about economic recovery, school openings and international travel, we need to be planning for a likely upswing in bigotry against ethnic minorities.

In particular, we should be anticipating which groups are most likely to bear the brunt of an increase in racism.

Chinese Australians were perceived as a threat to Australia before COVID-19, and are already reporting an increase in racist abuse during the pandemic. Most importantly, they are stereotyped as “competent but cold ” – a characterisation that makes them likely to be targeted in times of economic downturn.

Given these factors, it would be prudent to offer this community-specific, proactive support, and tackle any racism – towards them or any other group – decisively.

We need our leaders to step in

Political leaders are crucial in this regard.

Politicians can either stoke antagonism or lead the discourse in the other direction. They can aggressively counter any suggestion of racism and steer Australia through a difficult time, without allowing it to devour itself from the inside in the process.

Recently we have seen examples of both.

Labor senator Kristina Keneally has called for a cut to temporary migration to put “Australian workers first”.

But other MPs have had a different emphasis. In the context of coronavirus, Labor’s multicultural affairs spokesperson Andrew Giles has been repeating Labor’s calls for an anti-racism strategy.

On matters as important as this, unequivocal guidance from the highest levels of politics is required.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already criticised COVID-related racism. But given that history shows us we are just at the beginning of what could be a protracted and dark period for race relations in Australia, much more must be done – and soon.

Read more: As restrictions ease, here are 5 crucial ways for Australia to stay safely on top of COVID-19

An uptick in racial prejudice during our economic downturn is not inevitable.

But the fallout of ignoring this prospect would be ugly for all Australians.

This is another outbreak we can anticipate. It, too, needs to be prepared for, contained, and eliminated.

– ref. We know racism and recessions go together. Australia must prepare to stop a racism spike here. – https://theconversation.com/we-know-racism-and-recessions-go-together-australia-must-prepare-to-stop-a-racism-spike-here-138215

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Tait, Senior Research Fellow, National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University

In a single year, extra-medical opioid use caused more than 2,200 deaths, 32,000 hospital admissions and resulted in the loss of over 70,000 years of life in Australia.

“Extra-medical” opioid use includes both the illegal use of opioids such as heroin, and the misuse of pharmaceutical opioids – that is, when they’re not used as prescribed or intended.

In a report released today, we’ve quantified the social costs of pharmaceutical opioid misuse and illicit opioid use in Australia over the financial year 2015-16.

We found extra-medical opioid use came at a cost of an estimated A$15.7 billion.

The scope of the problem

An Australian survey showed more than 645,000 people used extra-medical opioids in the previous year.

But because of the stigma around opioid use, estimates from national surveys of how many people use extra-medical opioids or how many people would be classified as “dependent” may be underestimates.

We used results from the Global Burden of Disease study to estimate more than 104,000 people in Australia were opioid-dependent in 2015-16, putting them at high risk of harms associated with their drug use.

Read more: Opioid dependence treatment saves lives. So why don’t more people use it?

While Australia has so far avoided the pharmaceutical opioid crisis seen elsewhere, especially in the United States, the number of Australian deaths due to pharmaceutical opioids outstrip those from heroin.

In 2017, only 28% of opioid deaths involved illicit opioids alone. Some 63% involved pharmaceutical opioids and the remainder involved both.

Let’s break down the costs

Premature deaths accounted for about 80% of the costs of opioids to society, both in tangible and intangible costs.

As the average age of death from opioids is quite young (43 years), each death results in many potential years of life being lost. We calculated 70,000 years of life were lost as a result of premature deaths from opioids in 2015-16.

The intangible cost is the value society is willing to pay to prevent pain and suffering or premature death, which we come to through a variety of modelling techniques.

The tangible costs are the economic contributions the deceased person would have made through employment and unpaid household work, as well as the costs to employers in replacing an employee.

Making up the tangible costs, we also found crime accounted for $940 million, workplace costs such as from absenteeism and injury were $460 million, hospital inpatient care $250 million, and costs to other health services were $830 million.

Typically, economic modelling doesn’t include any “harms” to the consumer, as those harms are part of a rational decision to consume. But for someone who has a drug dependence, that decision may be affected by the dependence and related consequences such as withdrawal.

As including those costs is controversial, we calculated them, but did not add them to our total. Based on data from the Global Burden of Disease study we estimated the value of the lost quality of life for the 104,000 people dependent on opioids at $14.9 billion.

Read more: Fixing pain management could help us solve the opioid crisis

We also looked at lost quality of life for partners and children living with a person dependent on opioids. We calculated there were more than 41,000 adults and 70,000 children living in these households in 2015-16.

Based on research on the impact of living with an alcohol dependent person, we estimated the value of their lost quality of life at $12 billion.

These tentative estimates were also omitted from the overall total.

Tackling the problem

Since a low point of 529 deaths in 2006, we’ve seen an increasing trend in deaths from extra-medical opioid use in Australia. But recent initiatives could serve to reduce deaths and other costs.

In Australia, “take home naloxone”, a drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, is increasingly available with support from the federal and state and territory governments.

Read more: How we can reduce dependency on opioid painkillers in rural and regional Australia

While most deaths documented in our report were due to drug toxicity (overdose), liver disease and liver cancer due to hepatitis C virus (HCV) accounted for 39% of extra-medical opioid deaths.

In March 2016, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme subsidised a new treatment for HCV.

This development has the potential to markedly reduce HCV related-disease and death for people dependent on opioids. A study in New South Wales has already noted a significant decline in HCV-related deaths and ill health in a broader population.

Needle and syringe programs remain important in preventing blood borne viruses for people who inject opioids. Along with access to opioid treatment (both pharmacological and psycho-social) these programs are central to our efforts to prevent and reduce opioid-related disease and deaths.

We’ve also seen regulatory changes. Between 2000 and 2013, 1,437 deaths involved codeine. So in 2018 increased restrictions were placed on over-the-counter medications containing codeine.

Initial findings are promising but we look forward to evidence about the longer-term effects of this approach.

There’s more we could be doing

It’s important to recognise costs are typically estimated, for example the amount of time a general practitioner spends treating opioid-related conditions.

There are also other costs we know occurred, but where we can’t attribute a specific amount to opioids, such as efforts at our borders to address drug importation. So overall expenditure is the best approximation rather than a definitive figure.

Read more: How new hepatitis C drugs could tackle liver cancer, too

Social cost studies like this one provide a focus on the overall harms associated with a condition that can drive debate, policy reform and the allocation of health resources.

It’s critical we continue to enhance access to a range of treatments for opioid dependence and continue with other strategies already in place to tackle this tragic loss of life.

In addition, we need to focus on examining the impact of online supply of “counterfeit” and other pharmaceuticals outside of medical regulation, and develop targeted responses where indicated.

– ref. 2,200 deaths, 32,000 hospital admissions, 15.7 billion dollars: what opioid misuse costs Australia in a year – https://theconversation.com/2-200-deaths-32-000-hospital-admissions-15-7-billion-dollars-what-opioid-misuse-costs-australia-in-a-year-137712

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jaana Dielenberg, Science Communication Manager, The University of Queensland

We know feral cats are an enormous problem for wildlife – across Australia, feral cats collectively kill more than three billion animals per year.

Cats have played a leading role in most of Australia’s 34 mammal extinctions since 1788, and are a big reason populations of at least 123 other threatened native species are dropping.

Read more: Feral cat cull: why the 2 million target is on scientifically shaky ground

But pet cats are wreaking havoc too. Our new analysis compiles the results of 66 different studies on pet cats to gauge the impact of Australia’s pet cat population on the country’s wildlife.

The results are staggering. On average, each roaming pet cat kills 186 reptiles, birds and mammals per year, most of them native to Australia. Collectively, that’s 4,440 to 8,100 animals per square kilometre per year for the area inhabited by pet cats.

If you own a cat and want to protect wildlife, you should keep it inside. In Australia, 1.1 million pet cats are contained 24 hours a day by responsible pet owners. The remaining 2.7 million pet cats – 71% of all pet cats – are able to roam and hunt.

What’s more, your pet cat could be getting out without you knowing. A radio tracking study in Adelaide found that of the 177 cats whom owners believed were inside at night, 69 cats (39%) were sneaking out for nocturnal adventures.

Surely not my cat

Just over one-quarter of Australian households (27%) have pet cats, and about half of cat-owning households have two or more cats.

Many owners believe their animals don’t hunt because they never come across evidence of killed animals.

But studies that used cat video tracking collars or scat analysis (checking what’s in the cat’s poo) have established many pet cats kill animals without bringing them home. On average, pet cats bring home only 15% of their prey.

Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 390 million animals per year in Australia.

This huge number may lead some pet owners to think the contribution of their own cat wouldn’t make much difference. However, we found even single pet cats have driven declines and complete losses of populations of some native animal species in their area.

Documented cases have included: a feather-tailed glider population in south eastern NSW; a skink population in a Perth suburb; and an olive legless lizard population in Canberra.

Urban cats

On average, an individual feral cat in the bush kills 748 reptiles, birds and mammals a year – four times the toll of a hunting pet cat. But feral cats and pet cats roam over very different areas.

Pet cats are confined to cities and towns, where you’ll find 40 to 70 roaming cats per square kilometre. In the bush there’s only one feral cat for every three to four square kilometres.

So while each pet cat kills fewer animals than a feral cat, their high urban density means the toll is still very high. Per square kilometre per year, pet cats kill 30-50 times more animals than feral cats in the bush.

Most of us want to see native wildlife around towns and cities. But such a vision is being compromised by this extraordinary level of predation, especially as the human population grows and our cities expand.

Many native animals don’t have high reproductive rates so they cannot survive this level of predation. The stakes are especially high for threatened wildlife in urban areas.

Pet cats living near areas with nature also hunt more, reducing the value of places that should be safe havens for wildlife.

Read more: A hidden toll: Australia’s cats kill almost 650 million reptiles a year

The 186 animals each pet cat kills per year on average is made up of 110 native animals (40 reptiles, 38 birds and 32 mammals).

For example, the critically endangered western ringtail possum is found in suburban areas of Mandurah, Bunbury, Busselton and Albany. The possum did not move into these areas – rather, we moved into their habitat.

What can pet owners do?

Keeping your cat securely contained 24 hours a day is the only way to prevent it from killing wildlife.

It’s a myth that a good diet or feeding a cat more meat will prevent hunting: even cats that aren’t hungry will hunt.

Various devices, such as bells on collars, are commercially marketed with the promise of preventing hunting. While some of these items may reduce the rate of successful kills, they don’t prevent hunting altogether.

And they don’t prevent cats from disturbing wildlife. When cats prowl and hunt in an area, wildlife have to spend more time hiding or escaping. This reduces the time spent feeding themselves or their young, or resting.

In Mandurah, WA, the disturbance and hunting of just one pet cat and one stray cat caused the total breeding failure of a colony of more than 100 pairs of fairy terns.

Benefits of a life indoors

Keeping cats indoors protects pet cats from injury, avoids nuisance behaviour and prevents unwanted breeding.

Cats allowed outside often get into fights with other cats, even when they’re not the fighting type (they can be attacked by other cats when running away).

Roaming cats are also very prone to getting hit by a vehicle. According to the Humane Society of the United States, indoor cats live up to four times longer than those allowed to roam freely.

Indoor cats have lower rates of cat-borne diseases, some of which can infect humans. For example, in humans the cat-borne disease toxoplasmosis can cause illness, miscarriages and birth defects.

Read more: For whom the bell tolls: cats kill more than a million Australian birds every day

But Australia is in a very good position to make change. Compared to many other countries, the Australian public are more aware of how cats threaten native wildlife and more supportive of actions to reduce those impacts.

It won’t be easy. But since more than one million pet cats are already being contained, reducing the impacts from pet cats is clearly possible if we take responsibility for them.

– ref. One cat, one year, 110 native animals: lock up your pet, it’s a killing machine – https://theconversation.com/one-cat-one-year-110-native-animals-lock-up-your-pet-its-a-killing-machine-138412

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

As an emergency response to the potential mass unemployment created by the sudden lockdown, the Morrison government’s JobKeeper program has been reasonably successful.

An estimated 700 000 employers, accounting for 4.7 million workers have signed up.

On the other hand, the sign up of workers has been been about one million less than expected.

Plenty of problems have emerged with limits on coverage.

Some reflect the difficulty of defining a “job” in an environment in which permanent employment has been eroded in favour of casual employment and contracting and the gig economy.

Read more: How to tweak JobKeeper, if we must

Others seem arbitrary, such as the effective exclusion of local government and university employees, and workers whose employers are companies owned by foreign governments.

There will be bigger problems as time goes on.

Working life will change

JobKeeper helps workers keep their existing jobs, but it can’t do anything for those who are already unemployed, who leave their jobs, or who need to switch employers.

As the crisis continues, the number in these categories is going to grow, while the number of workers protected by the scheme will shrink.

In six months time, when JobKeeper is due to end, it seems reasonable to assume that most of the restrictions requiring businesses to close their doors will have been lifted.

Shops, cafes, gyms and bars will be open, with adaptations for social distancing.

But other parts of the economy won’t be anything like the “normal” that existed before the crisis.

Even after the domestic restrictions end, large-scale international travel won’t resume until an effective vaccine is found and distributed widely enough so that (at a minimum) all intending travellers can be vaccinated.

Tourism will be very different, as will work and commerce, with the shift to online working, shopping and medicine only partly reversed.

Read more: This time is different: Australia’s tourist numbers may take years to recover

A much smaller number of people coming into the country (even if long-term arrivals are be allowed in subject to quarantine) means weaker construction and education industries.

And even if we recover fully, our customers in the rest of the world will not. Europe is already in a deep recession. The pandemic was slow to reach the United States, but the likely impacts on both health and the economy look to be even worse.

These shocks would be a challenge even to a strong economy. But Australia’s performance before the crisis was sluggish at best.

Read more: The jobs market is nowhere near as good as you’ve heard, and it’s changing us

Unemployment had barely come down from the levels reached during the global financial crisis and under-employment had reached all time highs. Inflation was persistently below the Reserve Bank’s target range, reflecting the overall weakness of the economy.

In these circumstances, the idea that the economy will magically “snap back” to normal once restrictions are lifted is a dangerous fantasy.

If we are to avoid an era of sustained high unemployment similar to the one we had in the early 1990s, the government must act to stop it happening.

JobKeeper should be made portable

The first step should be to convert JobKeeper into a wage-subsidy program, in the hands of workers, not tied to previous employment. Unemployed workers could assign the subsidy to whichever employer willing to hire them under standard wages and conditions.

There are plenty of difficulties with such a program. The most immediate is the need to ensure that it creates additional jobs, rather than allowing employers to sack existing workers and replace them with subsidised new hires.

A second lot of problems arises, as with JobKeeper, because of the increasing prevalence of non-standard forms of employment.

Read more: Despite huge coronavirus stimulus package, the government might still need to pay more

These problems are not reasons to abandon the idea of wage subsidies. Rather, they imply that the government should be thinking about these problems now, rather than deferring the problem with the assertion that everything will return to normal in six months.

Much more will be needed to avoid mass unemployment.

Public services such as health and education will need to employ more people to deal with the extra requirements of social distancing, and the need for training and retraining.

Read more: Our ailing aged care system shows you can’t skimp on nursing care

Restructuring the economy will require the abandonment of free-market doctrine in favour of direct government involvement, including public ownership where necessary, at least for a while.

And while it is appropriate to meet the immediate needs of the economy through increased borrowing, we will ultimately need increased revenue, and we will probably need to forgo the lavish legislated tax cuts that were due to kick in from the mid-2020s.

– ref. We need to plan for life after JobKeeper now. We need to make it portable – https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-plan-for-life-after-jobkeeper-now-we-need-to-make-it-portable-138416

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carly Osborn, Visiting Research Fellow, University of Adelaide

I am feeling isolated. Is this a state, or an emotion? Rather than getting into the semantics of language, I will ask another question: what does isolation feel like?

Isolation feels like being stuck on the couch despite having time for a walk. Isolation feels like comfort eating nachos and box wine.

Our bodies are tired. Our minds slip and skid between blank boredom and anxious overthinking. What is happening to us, here in our homes, away from the routines and interactions that used to shape our days?

I am feeling isolated. Scholars of emotion talk about feelings as judgements – our considered response to what’s happening. These judgements tint our experience as we live it: like the transferred epithets of Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster, “pronging a moody forkful” of eggs, or “balancing a thoughtful lump of sugar” on his teaspoon. Experience reaches us through these filters of judgement.

This morning I made myself a lonely piece of toast and am writing this article drinking a grateful-for-free-childcare cup of tea.

Every lonely person is lonely in their own way

Some of the effects of isolation are common to all human beings, across times and places. Humans have evolved as communal animals living in “families, tribes, and communities”. We feel “the pain of social isolation and the rewards of social connection”.

Beyond these human constants, our emotional experiences are powerfully shaped by our individual circumstances. Our communal and personal histories affect our expectations of life and our responses to events. In this sense, your feeling of isolation is different to mine. Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each of us is feeling this crisis in our own way.

Medical researchers of isolation note this recursive flow of emotion: symptoms like poor sleep and high blood pressure correlated not with measures of patients’ objective isolation, but their perceived isolation.

One person’s agonising loneliness is another’s boring staycation. We are as isolated as we feel.

This does not mean our feelings aren’t real. They are, in fact, the only reality we can know. Is there a meaningful difference between asking “How are you?” and “How are you feeling?”

Full bodied feeling

Our feelings are experienced by our whole selves: bodies, minds, emotions, all intertwined.

We feel the absence of human touch, we feel anxiety as we obsess over daily statistics, we feel exhausted by shopping trips that feel like ventures into no-man’s-land, we feel grief at the horrific headlines of death, and frustration at government responses. We feel loss and confusion about our about our identity and value as jobs disappear.

Those who contract COVID-19 report not only fear of dying, but boredom and anger at being isolated from family and friends.

We are feeling isolated. Despite our Tolstoyan uniqueness, we find comfort in shared feelings. We share memes about interminable Zoom meetings, or homeschooling, or day drinking. We feel seen, heard, understood – less isolated. These are called affiliative behaviours and they are a powerful coping strategy for all kinds of crises. Somehow our suffering is more bearable if another human being knows how we feel, and feels it too.

Connecting with one another, and feeling that we are in this together, can mitigate some of the pain of isolation. Sufferers during previous pandemics who felt their isolation was serving an altruistic goal of protecting their neighbours reported less negative emotions about isolation.

Political exiles have, throughout history, found ways to endure isolation. Early modern English nuns in exiled European convents drew upon antique history to comfort themselves, identifying with Biblical stories of suffering that finally resolve in homecoming and restored community.

Prisoners in solitary confinement have relied on simple things like sunlight and human voices on the radio to keep the worst at bay.

They are feeling isolated. Isolation feels like being alone but it also feels like reaching beyond our usual spheres, feeling new empathy with people who were strangers before.

Isolation is a long-term state for many. From professional women in male-dominated fields, to caregivers and those in remote communities, to religious and queer minorities.

Asylum seekers in detention report deep feelings of isolation and invisibility. Their poems open up for us in new ways now.

New parents, especially mothers, experience isolation with feelings familiar to many of us right now: “powerlessness, insufficiency, guilt, loss, exhaustion, ambivalence, resentment and anger”. Those who are young, or poor, or single, are especially at risk of feeling isolated, overwhelmed and worried.

In our empathy we are connected across social and economic gaps.

Emotional force

We are feeling isolated. Now, our shared emotions become a central part of how we make sense of the crisis.

Shared, collective emotion can be a strong driver of collective activity. Enough shared emotion can cause us to feel like a unified nation, our common humanity stronger than our superficial differences. Conversely, emotional sparks can create political cliques who cohere around shared anger towards other groups.

Scholars of emotion describe emotions as a force, not only felt within, but acting upon the external world. Emotions do things. Big, collective emotions do big things. We are only beginning to discover what isolation is doing to us.

– ref. Is isolation a feeling? – https://theconversation.com/is-isolation-a-feeling-138009

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Smillie, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne

Much has been written on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on negative emotions, such as rising anxiety and the loneliness of self-isolation.

But while things may seem all doom and gloom, new data reveals it’s surprisingly rare for a person to experience purely negative emotions. More commonly, people are instead experiencing mixed emotions.

Read more: Social distancing can make you lonely. Here’s how to stay connected when you’re in lockdown

What are mixed emotions?

Psychologists have traditionally viewed emotions as falling along a single dimension, ranging from positive (such as happy or excited) to negative (such as sad or anxious). This implies at any given moment we feel “good” or “bad”, but not both. Positive and negative emotions have even been said to mutually inhibit each other – so if you are enjoying your day but receive some bad news, your positive mood is supposedly replaced by a negative one.

However, an alternative view suggests positive and negative emotions vary independently, and can therefore occur simultaneously. This allows for the experience of “mixed emotions”, such as feeling both happy and sad, or nervous but excited, at the same time.

There is now extensive evidence for the existence of mixed emotions. And new data reveals they may be surprisingly common.

Mixed emotions are more common than purely negative ones

A recent study led by Kate Barford (an author of this article) examined how mixed emotions arise in day-to-day life. Across three participant samples, Barford and her colleagues found mixed emotions typically emerge when negative emotions intensify (such as following a negative event), and blend with ongoing positive emotions.

Thus, bad feelings do not always extinguish positive ones, like flicking off a light switch. Rather, they more often transform a positive mood into mixed emotions.

Intriguingly, the study also found purely negative emotions (the absence of any concurrent positive emotions) are surprisingly rare. In all three samples, participants reported purely negative emotions less than 1% of the time during one to two weeks of daily life. In contrast, mixed emotions were reported up to 36% of the time.

This shows our negative emotions are rarely so strong that they overwhelm our positive ones, at least during everyday circumstances.

Mixed emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Currently, most of us are not facing everyday circumstances. As the coronavirus spreads around the globe many nations have gone into lockdown, and most of us are wondering when life might return to normal. You might think negative emotions would dominate during such ominous times.

Read more: Coronavirus: three ways the crisis may permanently change our lives

To find out, we surveyed 854 Australian residents about their emotional experiences in late March, as government restrictions were introduced. In line with widespread reporting, we found 72% of our sample were indeed experiencing negative emotions.

However, almost all of these people also reported feeling positive emotions, such as joy and contentment. And only 3% of our sample reported purely negative emotions as the crisis unfolded. In comparison, around 70% of people reported feeling mixed emotions – much higher than previous found by Barford and colleagues.

The high rate of mixed emotions during the COVID-19 crisis may be the result of increased negative emotions that blend with positive ones – as Barford and colleagues found previously.

Mixed emotions might also arise from conflicted thoughts and feelings about this predicament. For instance, we might dislike social distancing, but approve of it for the sake of our collective health. Or we might enjoy the novelty and flexibility of altered working arrangements (such as working from home), even though they can be disruptive.

Indeed, almost half of the participants in our sample reported they enjoyed tackling some of the challenges of lockdown.

Who experiences mixed emotions?

Our emotions are not determined simply by our circumstances, but also our personalities.

In the study by Barford and her colleagues, individuals scoring lower on a personality trait called “emotional stability” experienced more mixed emotions. This was because these individuals were more susceptible to increases in negative emotion, which blended with ongoing positive ones to create an overall bittersweet experience.

This same finding emerged in our survey in the context of COVID-19. We found the personality trait of low emotional stability was a stronger predictor of mixed emotions than other situational and demographic factors. These included age (younger people experienced more mixed emotions) and the extent of disruption to one’s day-to-day activities.

Read more: Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone

Could mixed emotions be helpful?

Interestingly, psychologists think mixed emotions may have some benefits. Specifically, whereas purely negative emotions can lead us to disengage from our goals, mixed emotions may prepare us to respond to uncertain situations in flexible ways, such as re-proritising our work projects, or socialising via Zoom.

There is even evidence the experience of mixed emotions may cushion the impact of uncertainty on our wellbeing.

So, while sentiments of fear and sadness are dominating the headlines, the high prevalence of mixed emotions during this pandemic may be good news for our mental health.

– ref. Not all doom and gloom: even in a pandemic, mixed emotions are more common than negative ones – https://theconversation.com/not-all-doom-and-gloom-even-in-a-pandemic-mixed-emotions-are-more-common-than-negative-ones-138014

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Lycett, NHMRC Early Career Fellow, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Centre for Social and Early Emotional Development, Deakin University

As we start to think about rebuilding our lives in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, we need to be clearer than ever about what kind of Australia we want to live in, what counts as progress, and how we measure how well we’re succeeding.

This is because the indirect effects of this pandemic – social, emotional, educational and economic – will far outweigh the direct effects on physical health. We will need every ounce of clarity around our national identity (what we stand for) to ensure these don’t disproportionately impact the most vulnerable in our society.

Read more: ‘The Australian government is not listening’: how our country is failing to protect its children

Among those most at risk are children and young people, who are now attempting to make their way forward in a very different world.

Despite Australia’s strong economy before the pandemic, young Australians were already showing signs of struggle. Australia ranked just 21st out of 41 European Union/OECD countries on comparative indicators of well-being.

Research shows how poorly some young Australians were faring:

The question now is how much worse these statistics will get as we enter the most significant economic downturn since the second world war.

The simple answer is we don’t know, but experts fear the worst for children and young people. This raises a pressing question about how we safeguard the well-being of future generations.

Positive changes brought by the pandemic

There are some reasons to be hopeful. The pandemic has forced us to find support in our local communities (albeit at a distance) and immediate families. For some, this has meant long walks in the park, getting to know neighbours and incredible acts of human kindness.

These simple things may be improving well-being in children and young people by helping them appreciate the natural world and better understand altruism. These values are often dismissed when we focus on developing the next generation to contribute to the economy rather than society.

Read more: For children in foster care, the coronavirus pandemic could be extremely destabilising

We have seen the greatness of Australian civil society, too. The importance of protecting the health of every Australian has been a higher priority than protecting our wealth and economic growth.

However, health and economics are inextricably tied. As we adjust to living with coronavirus, we face the unenviable challenge of trying to spark an economic recovery while maintaining our focus on care for the most vulnerable in society. Herein lies a new test of Australian civic values.

Again, there is reason for hope. The nature of the pandemic has required societal changes that are more environmentally sound – greater localised food production, a focus on regional trade and Zoom meetings over travel. The more important things in life have been clarified for many.

Read more: 8 tips on what to tell your kids about coronavirus

Ironically, the pandemic may have paved the way for sweeping reforms that if sustained, could change society for the better.

Within these possibilities, it is essential we focus on the next generation because they are the future custodians of Australian civic values and society. It is time to elevate the well-being of children and young people as a new nation-building commitment, and fully invest in them as we adjust to our new norms.

Steps to ensure children’s well-being

We can do this in straightforward and concrete ways that can be implemented immediately. Key among these would be to

1. add well-being measures for children and young people to our national accounting system so our leaders are held accountable for progress on these goals

2. maintain universal free child care and access to early years learning to improve equity in school readiness

3. permanently increase income support, such as Newstart, and prevent long-term and structural unemployment to help bring children and young people out of poverty

4. invest in affordable and social housing construction to stimulate the economy and ensure all children and young people have a home

5. encourage employers to continue enabling secure, flexible working arrangements to increase family time and reduce commuting

6. commit to climate action to ensure the natural world and our society not only survives for future generations but thrives

7. listen to the voices of children and young people (particularly First Nations peoples) by providing meaningful and developmentally appropriate opportunities to participate in nation building, including the establishment of highly effective youth citizens’ assemblies.

Leaders have been listening to experts and making decisions based on evidence throughout the pandemic. And as a result, confidence in government and social trust in Australia have improved.

It is time to choose the type of Australia we want to live in as we forge our new path with coronavirus. Let’s ensure we prioritise the health, well-being and security of our youngest citizens and future generations.

– ref. Young people were already struggling before the pandemic. Here are 7 ways to help them navigate a changed world – https://theconversation.com/young-people-were-already-struggling-before-the-pandemic-here-are-7-ways-to-help-them-navigate-a-changed-world-138015

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Max Holleran, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Melbourne, University of Melbourne

Stay-at-home orders have meant many people are happy to live in dispersed suburbs with free-standing, single-family homes. Quarantine feels less daunting with a backyard, plenty of storage space to stockpile supplies, and a big living room for morning stretches. Before the crisis, though, Australia was slowly moving toward urban density.

More apartments with communal amenities, rather than privatised space, were being built, creating less dependence on driving. It is easy to think these urbanites are now glumly looking out their windows towards the more spacious suburbs, wishing they had made different choices. Yet, despite the impacts of restrictions, Australia’s future is in urban density and not the suburban sprawl of the past.

Read more: As coronavirus forces us to keep our distance, city density matters less than internal density

The benefits of density done well

Before the world changed and Australians were ushered inside en masse, the country was making great strides toward creating more compact, walkable cities. Denser neighbourhoods provided multiple benefits:

• better access to transport alternatives to cars

• the creation of vibrant commercial districts

• increased ability to house more people during affordability and homelessness crises.

Read more: No need to give up on crowded cities – we can make density so much better

Nationally, we were building almost as many apartment units as single family homes. In cities like Melbourne and Sydney, apartment construction even surpassed stand-alone houses despite lax quality regulations and design and construction flaws.

Density was achieved not just through towers for Asian investors in CBDs, but more subtle alterations such as townhouses and small blocks of flats. Residents moving into these neighbourhoods affirmed a sense of environmental consciousness, based on driving less, but also the belief in tight-knit communities with small businesses, parks and thriving street life.

Read more: Becoming more urban: attitudes to medium-density living are changing in Sydney and Melbourne

Beware the siren call of suburbia

With the onset of COVID-19, it seems Australia’s new-found love of city living might be over, reverting to the suburban norm. The suburbs always offered a sense of safety, now more than ever.

Yet much of this is illusory. People still have to go shopping and, in many cases, to work, where they could be exposed to the virus. People have just as much control over their physical space in an apartment as in a house. (The exception is the lifts, but distancing measures and gloves can easily reduce risk.)

Australians may be tempted to re-embrace suburbia out of nostalgia for pre-virus safety, but they should remember what brought them to cities in the first place. As the architect Robin Boyd bemoaned way back in his 1960 critique of suburbanisation, The Australian Ugliness:

… the suburbs’ stealthy crawl like dry rot eating into the forest edge.

With 60 years of government policy propping up sprawl through freeway construction and tax breaks like negative gearing, it continues to be its own kind of infection scarring the landscape.

Read more: Move away from a car-dominated city looks radical but it’s a sensible plan for a liveable future

Don’t blame public health failures on density

Despite re-animated fears of living closer together, many countries that have successfully contained the coronavirus have some of the most densely populated cities in the world. These cities include Seoul, Hong Kong and Taipei. They have done this not by separating people but by increasing testing and contact tracing.

Read more: How South Korea flattened the coronavirus curve with technology

What is needed during a pandemic is not panic but effective public health. Prosperous, well-managed city governments are often best placed to offer these services to the community.

Negative examples like the United States, where the Trump administration has devolved responsibilities to states and cities, provide even more proof of why cities have to be at the forefront of public health campaigns, whether or not they choose that role voluntarily. The same could be said of Australia, where state governments in Victoria and New South Wales took the lead on restricting gatherings as the national government dithered.

Now, more than ever, we are appreciating urban life from afar: making lists of our favourite restaurants, changing our Zoom background during “virtual happy hour” to the interior of our local pub, and yearning for social connections that have migrated online.

We should listen to our desires and use this moment to double down on urban density when the crisis subsides, by funding mass transit and providing incentives to construct apartments rather than free-standing suburban homes.

Low-density living is less sustainable, less affordable and less fun. We should all remember that, despite currently having to keep our distance from one another.

Read more: Our cities fall short on sustainability, but planning innovations offer local solutions

– ref. Why coronavirus must not stop Australia creating denser cities – https://theconversation.com/why-coronavirus-must-not-stop-australia-creating-denser-cities-137487

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michaela Pascoe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Mental Health, Victoria University

Don’t shake hands, don’t high-five, and definitely don’t hug.

We’ve been bombarded with these messages during the pandemic as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19, meaning we may not have hugged our friends and family in months.

This might be really hard for a lot of us, particularly if we live alone. This is because positive physical touch can make us feel good. It boosts levels of hormones and neurotransmitters that promote mental well-being, is involved in bonding, and can help reduce stress.

So how can we cope with a lack of touch?

Touch helps us bond

In humans, the hormone oxytocin is released during hugging, touching, and orgasm. Oxytocin also acts as a neuropeptide, which are small molecules used in brain communication.

It is involved in social recognition and bonding, such as between parents and children. It may also be involved in generosity and the formation of trust between people.

Touch also helps reduce anxiety. When premature babies are held by their mothers, both infants and mothers show a decrease in cortisol, a hormone involved in the stress response.

Touch promotes mental well-being

In adults with advanced cancer, massages or simple touch can reduce pain and improve mood. Massage therapy has been shown to increase levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter (one of the body’s chemical messengers) involved in satisfaction, motivation, and pleasure. Dopamine is even released when we anticipate pleasurable activities such as eating and sex.

Read more: We need to flatten the ‘other’ coronavirus curve, our looming mental health crisis

Disruptions to normal dopamine levels are linked to a range of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, depression and addiction.

Serotonin is another neurotransmitter that promotes feelings of well-being and happiness. Positive touch boosts the release of serotonin, which corresponds with reductions in cortisol.

Serotonin is also important for immune system function, and touch has been found to improve our immune system response.

Symptoms of depression and suicidal behaviour are associated with disruptions in normal serotonin levels.

But what about a lack of touch?

Due to social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, we should be vigilant about the possible effects of a lack of physical touch, on mental health.

It is not ethical to experimentally deprive people of touch. Several studies have explored the impacts of naturally occurring reduced physical touch.

For example, living in institutional care and receiving reduced positive touch from caregivers is associated with cognitive and developmental delays in children. These delays can persist for many years after adoption.

Read more: Childhood deprivation affects brain size and behaviour

Less physical touch has also been linked with a higher likelihood of aggressive behaviour. One study observed preschool children in playgrounds with their parents and peers, in both the US and France, and found that parents from the US touched their children less than French parents. It also found the children from the US displayed more aggressive behaviour towards their parents and peers, compared to preschoolers in France.

Another study observed adolescents from the US and France interacting with their peers. The American kids showed more aggressive verbal and physical behaviour than French adolescents, who engaged in more physical touch, although there may also be other factors that contribute to different levels of aggression in young people from different cultures.

Maintain touch where we can

We can maintain touch with the people we live with even if we are not getting our usual level of physical contact elsewhere. Making time for a hug with family members can even help with promoting positive mood during conflict. Hugging is associated with smaller decreases in positive emotions and can lessen the impact of negative emotions in times of conflict.

In children, positive touch is correlated with more self-control, happiness, and pro-social skills, which are behaviours intended to benefit others. People who received more affection in childhood behave more pro-socially in adulthood and also have more secure attachments, meaning they display more positive views of themselves, others, and relationships.

Pets can help

Petting animals can increase levels of oxytocin and decrease cortisol, so you can still get your fill of touch by interacting with your pets. Pets can reduce stress, anxiety, depression and improve overall health.

In paediatric hospital settings, pet therapy results in improvements in mood. In adults, companion animals can decrease mental distress in people experiencing social exclusion.

Read more: Are people with pets less likely to die if they catch the coronavirus?

What if I live alone?

If you live alone, and you don’t have any pets, don’t despair. There are many ways to promote mental health and well-being even in the absence of a good hug.

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine highlights six areas for us to invest in to promote or improve our mental health: sleep, nutrition, social connectedness, exercise, stress management, and avoiding risky substance use. Stress management techniques that use breathing or relaxation may be a way to nurture your body when touch and hugs aren’t available.

Staying in touch with friends and loved ones can increase oxytocin and reduce stress by providing the social support we all need during physical distancing.

This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

– ref. Miss hugs? Touch forms bonds and boosts immune systems. Here’s how to cope without it during coronavirus – https://theconversation.com/miss-hugs-touch-forms-bonds-and-boosts-immune-systems-heres-how-to-cope-without-it-during-coronavirus-137612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Hamilton, Visiting Fellow, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

JobKeeper was always quick and dirty. Its design was far from perfect, with shortcomings I and others cautioned against.

These were forgiven in the face of an impending calamity, but the health interventions have worked so well the generosity of the economic interventions is being reconsidered.

In light of a report the treasury is reevaluating the design of JobKeeper, it’s worth setting out where the scheme falls short and how it could be tweaked.

The fixed per-worker subsidy was a bad idea

The big flaw in JobKeeper is that it is paid as a fixed amount per worker, regardless of the hours worked or wage earned.

The COVID-19 economic crisis stems from businesses losing money and laying off workers due to a lack of customers – either voluntarily or by government fiat.

The ideal response would be to replace that lost revenue on the condition that businesses maintain their workers’ hours and wages.

Read more: That estimate of 6.6 million Australians on JobKeeper, it tells us how it can be improved

With that condition, there would be no need to tie the amount of the subsidy to the number of workers on the payroll.

Doing so will save some firms and their workers’ jobs. But those with low margins and large fixed costs such as rent will be undercompensated, and others will be overcompensated.

Forcing firms to pay the entire subsidy to their workers (even where it means giving them a pay rise) limits their ability to use it to offset other costs. And it leads to all sorts of inequities among workers.

If the scheme must be tied to payroll, there are far better ways.

It could instead cover a portion of total payroll up to a ceiling with some additional support for non-payroll costs, of the kind offered in the United States and other countries.

To ensure no business got too much, the entire payment could be capped so the business made no more under JobKeeper than it did before the crisis.

Pay it up front and tax it back later if need be

Most businesses are eligible for JobKeeper if they expect turnover to fall by at least 30% in the coming quarter (or month if turnover is more than $20 million).

If things go better than expected and they end up not needing that much JobKeeper, they get to keep what’s been paid to them for the entire quarter, as long as their expectation was genuine.

As the advice from the Tax Office puts it:

We will accept your assessment of these turnovers, unless we have reason to believe that your calculation of your projected GST turnover was not reasonable.

But reasonable expectations are hard to police.

A better approach would be to pay businesses up front some proportion of total payroll for the same time period in the previous year.

Then, after the fact, what they are eligible for could be calculated based on actual payroll.

Any difference could be reconciled through the ordinary tax return process. Anything overpaid could be taxed back and any extra due could be paid out.

This would be simpler, clearer and better targeted, and solve the cash-flow problems businesses are complaining about.

Six months won’t be long enough for some

The scheme is set to end after six months on September 27 regardless of economic conditions.

Some businesses in some sectors are already back at work and others will come back soon. But some, such as those affected by the international travel ban, will be out of action until next year.

For those businesses that recover quickly, the turnover test will cut off support automatically. But for some others, the maximum six-month time frame will be too short.

A better approach would be to tie the duration to objective benchmarks tailored to particular sectors (such as the end of the international travel ban, for instance).

Extend it to workers who have missed out

Short-term casuals, most temporary visa holders, workers at certain foreign-controlled businesses, and employees at most universities were left out despite many of them working in the hardest-hit industries.

The reported underspend on JobKeeper makes these omissions all the more puzzling.

Read more: Why temporary migrants need JobKeeper

There was never a good reason – morally or economically – to exclude these people, and the budgetary constraint has turned out not to be an issue.

If changes to JobKeeper are to be made, they should be offered it immediately.

The Treasurer could fix all this, but he should wait

The JobKeeper legislation is merely a shell, with the detail stipulated in regulations imposed at the behest of the Treasurer.

This gives him discretion to make whatever changes he sees fit.

But whether he should make changes is a tough call.

There are clear flaws in the current system, and for many businesses it could be wound up earlier as the outlook has changed somewhat for the better.

Read more: JobKeeper is quick, dirty and effective: there was no time to make it perfect

But the government made a clear commitment to these millions of businesses and workers to maintain a certain level of support for the full six months.

The last thing anyone needs right now, when the confidence of consumers and businesses is more critical than ever, is to have the government pull out the rug it extended.

While there’s a lot the treasurer could do, there’s also a good case for leaving things for now.

– ref. How to tweak JobKeeper, if we must – https://theconversation.com/how-to-tweak-jobkeeper-if-we-must-138321

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Plekhanova, Lecturer, Massey University

The New Zealand government’s recently announced NZ$50 million subsidy package to support local media was necessary and urgent – even if it came too late to save the Bauer magazine titles from closing.

But the injection of government cash did not address the underlying cause of the decline of New Zealand’s media, which predates the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the internet has created new opportunities for media and audiences alike, those opportunities have come at a price. Traditional media organisations now compete with giant digital platforms, not only for the attention of readers, but also for the advertising revenue that was once their lifeblood.

Adding insult to injury, the digital platforms compete for audiences’ attention partly by distributing the news content that was first created and published by those now-struggling media organisations.

This not only damages the media and public discourse, it is harmful to taxpayers.

A carefully designed digital service tax (DST) could redress the balance and help level the playing field for the New Zealand media. Such a tax would compensate New Zealand for revenue lost by its failure to tax the profits of non-resident tech giants operating in its territory.

Rules forcing the likes of Google and Facebook to compensate the creators of the media content they carry – as has been introduced in Australia – could also be helpful. Both options could be applied quickly if there was the political will.

Read more: No more negotiating: new rules could finally force Google and Facebook to pay for news

The challenge of taxing the tech giants

The New Zealand market for internet advertising services is dominated by two multinationals – Google and Facebook. Unlike the local media, these giants do not pay income tax in New Zealand proportional to their local advertising revenues.

In 2015 Google, Facebook and Amazon accounted for 69% of digital ad revenues outside China. By 2018 their share had risen to 86%. But this growing share of global ad revenue is not matched by the income tax these firms pay in New Zealand.

Due to the complex way the digital giants report their finances, New Zealanders are left guessing how much ad revenue they generate. And yet, just across the Tasman, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the equivalent of the NZ Commerce Commission, has forced Google and Facebook to disclose their Australian targeted ad revenue for 2018.

The ACCC estimates Google generated around A$3.7 billion (NZ$3.9 billion) from ads placed on its own search pages and on third parties’ websites. Facebook’s ad revenue was around A$1.7 billion (NZ$1.8 billion).

Based on this data and the similarities between Australia and New Zealand, it is reasonable to conclude that in 2018 Google might have earned about NZ$720 million in New Zealand, and Facebook about NZ$349 million from targeted advertising only.

A disproportionately small tax take

Changes to reporting standards [made in 2014] mean Facebook isn’t required to file financial statements in New Zealand, so its 2018 tax bill is not public information. In 2018 Google NZ Ltd (an entity of Alphabet group) paid income tax of NZ$398,341 – about 0.055% of the estimated gross ad revenue “extracted” from the New Zealand market.

In Australia Google paid income tax A$26.5 million in 2018 (already a minimal amount), meaning Google New Zealand paid 66.5 times less income tax than its Australian equivalent for the same period. Given the New Zealand economy is about a seventh the size of Australia’s, this is an extremely wide disparity.

Read more: Attention economy: Facebook delivers traffic but no money for news media

New Zealand has been reluctant to unilaterally adopt a DST, possibly to avoid conflict with the US. However, with many OECD members introducing a DST – including France, Italy and the United Kingdom – further delay is difficult to justify. The more countries that put a DST in place the more costly it will become for the US to retaliate.

The New Zealand government has said it prefers “an internationally agreed solution through the OECD” to the tax challenges of digitalisation. The OECD has agreed to find a “solution” by the end of 2020.

With rising tensions between Europe and the US over taxing highly digitalised multinational businesses, that timeframe is looking increasingly unrealistic.

NZ can’t go it alone

The COVID-19 pandemic has further slowed the process. The delay favours the tech giants but not New Zealand and the other countries where they operate and pay little tax. These countries need to move quickly to stop the erosion of their tax bases.

New Zealand is unlikely to move without Australia on board, but Australia now seems more interested in other mechanisms to correct its relationship with the global tech giants.

The ACCC is developing a mandatory code of competitive conduct that will require Google and Facebook to pay news media for the use of their content. There are similar developments in France.

Such codes target anti-competitive conduct, whereas a DST involves compensation for the loss in revenue caused by outdated international tax rules. To some extent a DST is a charge for the dominant market position of multinational digital services firms.

The ACCC’s code is not a substitute for a digital services tax, but New Zealand could do worse than consider a similar scheme. In the end, both a DST and enforcing payment for content will be necessary if New Zealand wants its local media to survive, let alone thrive – and not just at the expense of taxpayers.

– ref. Google and Facebook pay way less tax in New Zealand than in Australia – and we’re paying the price – https://theconversation.com/google-and-facebook-pay-way-less-tax-in-new-zealand-than-in-australia-and-were-paying-the-price-137075

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Winnifred Louis, Professor, Social Psychology, The University of Queensland

The coronavirus restrictions are slowly being eased but the pressures on families at home still probably lead to many tears of frustration.

It could be tensions about noise and clutter, keeping up with home schooling and mums and dads torn between parenting and their own work duties.

So to make sure our memories of being locked in with our families are as positive as possible, here are some evidence-based tips for calming down, preventing conflict and dealing with any sibling rivalry.

Take a deep breath

If you feel yourself getting angry at something, breathe in while counting to three. Then breathe out slowly counting to six (or any patterns with a slower out breath). If you do this ten times you should notice yourself becoming calmer.

Read more: As restrictions ease, here are 5 crucial ways for Australia to stay safely on top of COVID-19

If you’re too agitated to breathe slowly, put your hands on your heart and simply wait until you feel more relaxed. Try counting to ten or 100 before you react.

Leave the room and take a break. Plan to deal with the niggle another time. When you’re on break, do something to distract yourself like make a drink, listen to music, look at a beautiful picture or play a video game that is absorbing.

Call a friend or professional helpline to help you get another perspective, especially if you feel scared or hurt.

Read more: Parents, you don’t always need to entertain your kids – boredom is good for them

Different strategies work for different people, so try them all. Encourage your kids to keep trying if they don’t initially succeed. You need to practise any skill to make it feel natural. For younger children, taking a break may be simpler to master.

Ease the tension before things blow

It’s good to calm down from explosions but it’s even better if you can reduce the build-up in the first place.

Take time to share some of the problems upsetting people and see if as family you can negotiate a solution.

It’s likely everyone in your family is more tense because of the COVID-19 crisis. Many aspects can’t be easily fixed, like lost work or money stress, but others can, such as creating new routines or sharing space, resources or chores.

Work out different ways to get exercise indoors, like games or apps. Plan ahead for the times that need extra care, like when people are tired, or if difficult tasks need finishing. Let others know what to expect.

And importantly, lower expectations for everyone. What used to be easy might now be hard, and that’s okay.

Control the emotions

Help everyone work on managing their emotions. Just because you are experiencing extra distress doesn’t mean you should snap at your loved ones.

Read more: 5 tips to help parents navigate the unique needs of children with autism learning from home

You need to grow your toolkit of things that make you feel calmer and happier when you’re under pressure.

It could be spending time talking about what is going right and what is okay, working with your hands, meditation or prayer, time with your partner, reading or learning something new.

Every day, take time do something from your toolkit to chill out.

Talk to each other

When the tension is lower, quiet family conversations can help by naming any stresses. Naming things like “this is a stressful time” or “I’m a bit grumpy about work today” helps children process emotions.

It’s important to actively listen to others and celebrate strengths.

Listening and repeating back what others say makes people feel heard, and so does acknowledging shared feelings (“I miss my friends too”). When parents calmly talk about how some things cannot be easily changed, it builds acceptance.

Over time, the most powerful thing to prevent explosions is to notice when anger is building so you can deal with it before things escalate.

It’s useful to reflect on questions such as “Will this matter in 20 years?” and “Am I taking this too personally?”

You can help children by exploring what might really be bothering them. That argument about a toy might be about feeling sad. Try to listen for the deeper message, so they feel understood.

Calm that sibling rivalry

If sibling rivalry is driving you to distraction, the good news is it does not mean there is something wrong. Low-level sibling bickering is common during times of tension and boredom.

But you should step in when the volume goes up with nasty name-calling or physical contact.

Read more: ‘Iso’, ‘boomer remover’ and ‘quarantini’: how coronavirus is changing our language

Acknowledge emotions, help the kids express what they feel and encourage empathy. Try to help them decide what’s fair, instead of imposing your view.

More serious incidents require you to stop the interaction. If there is harm, separate the kids, care for the hurt child and consider a consequence. Use time-outs to calm things down, not for punishment.

But like all conflict, prevention is better than punishment. Does one child need more attention, exercise, stimulation or structure? Do certain toys need to be put away, or shared?

Depending on the age of your children, you can help older kids to learn to react gently to provocation. Praise children when they take steps to manage their stress.

Remember, these are stressful times for many families around the world. If we can use this time to stay patient, manage tension and act with goodwill towards our loved ones, our families will be better equipped to weather COVID-19, and many other storms that will follow.

For more help and information see our website or go to 1800Respect and No To Violence.

This article was co-written with help from Tori Cooke at No To Violence, Peter Streker at Community Stars, Carmel O’Brien at PsychRespect, and the University of Queensland’s students Ruby Green and Kiara Minto.

– ref. How to stay calm and manage those family tensions during the coronavirus lockdown – https://theconversation.com/how-to-stay-calm-and-manage-those-family-tensions-during-the-coronavirus-lockdown-137166

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katja Lee, Lecturer, Communication and Media Studies, University of Western Australia

If you need confirmation of how much the world has changed, consider this. Finally I have a thing or two to teach Matthew McConaughey about performance.

McConaughey may have acted in more than 50 movies. He may have, among his accolades, two Golden Globes and an Oscar for best actor. He may be a professor of practice in television and film at the University of Texas.

But he’s just as much a newbie when it comes to Zoom, House Party and the like as the rest of us. It’s a performance reality many of us are not really ready for, despite video chat being nearly two decades old.

Whether it’s a games night, a wine with the gang, your new virtual classroom or boardroom, video conferencing is how many of us are maintaining a semblance of our old connections to loved ones, colleagues and community.

“I’m learning about this, a little bit,” McConaughey told late-night TV chat host Stephen Colbert after he hosted bingo over Zoom for Texan seniors.

“I was on a Zoom conference the other day and one of my friends in particular looked just sensational. He was uplit, he looked just like a czar! And I texted him: “What’s your Zoom game, bud?”

His friend’s game was to have considered video-conferencing as a stage, and then setting that stage using the elements used on any television or film set: lighting, sound and scenery.

What I want to talk about, though, is not the stage but what happens on it: performance.

Staging and performance

Performance is what I study in its broadest social sense as a researcher in persona studies. My speciality is celebrity persona. How celebrities strategically create and maintain public personas is the subject of my new book featuring famous Canadian women (including Margaret Trudeau, mother of Canada’s prime minister, and pop singer Shania Twain).

Persona comes from the Greek word for the mask worn by an actor to depict a character. It involves performance, though not acting in the usual sense. It is instead, in the words of leading persona scholars P. David Marshall, Christopher Moore and Kim Barbour:

A strategic public identity that is neither the true individual nor a false individual. It is an identity that is used to navigate the social world and only exists to manage collective connections. It is a performance of the self for strategies to be used in some public setting.

Who are you when you’re in public or interacting with others? How did you create that impression? Persona researchers investigate questions like these in a broad range of contexts – from relationships with family or colleagues to interacting through online video games and social media.

Just think of McConaughey, the good ol’ Texan boy and his development of his signature catchphrase – “alight alright alright”. It’s not false, but nor could it said to be true. It is persona.

Though it is often amplified in celebrities, everyone has a public persona. More than one, in fact.

How we present in a formal meeting is likely to differ to how we interact one-on-one with a close colleague. How we are with friends, and even different groups of friends, might be different again. So too with different family members.

We develop and cultivate these personas over a long period. We become so acclimatised to performing them that they feel “natural”.

Hide Self View

Video conferencing radically changes the conditions under which we interact with others.

As McConaughey’s Zoom mate recognised, it is a shiny new stage on which we’ve been thrust. What makes it different is that it enables (and requires) us to watch ourselves as we perform. This hyper-awareness of how we look and behave can be exhausting, and stressful. It’s not something even most actors ever need to do.

Which is why the “Hide Self View” option is so important.

When you enable this option, you are still performing your persona. You just don’t see it. It’s a little bit more like real life and the other “stages” we’re used to performing on.

Like audio-only phone calls. Here is a “stage” that is deeply familiar and provides some reprieve from the self-surveillance of video-conferencing.

So give yourself, and others, a break from video-conferencing if and when necessary. If you find it exhausting, there’s a good reason. The only real fix is to “switch off”.

That’s a hot tip even for Matthew McConaughey.

– ref. Hide self: one tip on video conferencing good enough for Matthew McConaughey – https://theconversation.com/hide-self-one-tip-on-video-conferencing-good-enough-for-matthew-mcconaughey-136609

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Australians have been told they can no longer be “heroes” and go to work if they have a cold.

During Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s press conference last week announcing plans to re-open the economy, workers were firmly instructed to stay home if they were sick.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said:

Everybody stays home when they’re unwell, no matter how mild your cold or your cough, stay home when you’re unwell, and please get a COVID test. That’s the best way we’ll find these hidden cases of the virus in our community … No more heroics of coming to work with a cough and a cold and a sore throat. That’s off the agenda for every Australian for the foreseeable future. Please.

In response, ACTU secretary Sally McManus pointed out that many workers do not have the luxury of paid sick leave and called for “paid pandemic leave”.

Nobel Prize-winning immunologist professor Peter Doherty tweeted his agreement, noting:

that’s a really important idea …The worst economic scenario is to open up, then have to shut down again.

There is also parliamentary support for greater pandemic leave.

Labor says the government must deal with the “core issue” of helping people stay home if they are sick. On Tuesday, the Greens introduced a bill to the Senate for 14-days of paid leave for “all workers”.

Almost 37 per cent of Australian workers don’t have paid sick leave

As we pointed out in March, Australia’s lack of sick leave is a major barrier for many workers who need to stay home.

According to our analysis of 2019 Australian Bureau of Statistics data, 24.4% of Australian employees were casuals without any access to paid leave. Adding in the self-employed, the proportion of all Australian workers without paid sick leave is close to 37%.

This share will have gone down since the start of the pandemic, because casuals are much more likely to have lost their jobs. But those seeking to go back to work in coming months are highly unlikely to be offered permanent jobs, so the share of employees without paid leave is likely to increase even more.

It is also worth noting that casual workers have less ability to work from home. Our ABS data analysis also shows about 30% of employees with paid sick leave were able to regularly work from home, compared to 10% of those without paid sick leave.

What leave do casuals already get?

In early April, the Fair Work Commission temporarily amended 99 modern awards to give all workers access to two weeks of unpaid “pandemic leave” and the flexibility to take extra annual leave at half pay.

But this leave is unpaid and casual workers are not entitled to annual leave.

There are sickness provisions under the JobSeeker payment. But as Labor argues, this does not pass the “pub test”, if people need to interact with Centrelink’s administrative processes in order to access a payment at short-notice.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Paul Kelly on the risk of a COVID-19 second-wave

We need an immediate payment for sick casuals

If Professor Murphy’s strong recommendations are to be followed, then we will need an immediate payment – without a waiting period – that is enough to keep people who should be self-isolating away from work.

We will also need to think about how to support people without paid leave who live in the same household as others who need to self-isolate.

In the short-term, only the federal government has the capacity to foot the bill so that workers stay home during coronavirus.

But there are a number of ways in which sick leave payments could reach casual workers.

The payment could come either directly from government or through employers, with the government reimbursing employers for the costs.

Existing payments show how it can be done

For example, we already have the $550 fortnightly coronavirus supplement that sits with the JobSeeker payment and is paid through Centrelink.

The JobKeeper payment – aimed at keeping workers connected to businesses who are struggling due to coronavirus – is roughly equivalent to the full-time minimum wage. It is paid by employers with reimbursement from the Australian Taxation Office.

Similarly, we already have other programs, such as the paid parental leave scheme, which can be paid either by Centrelink or by employers who are then reimbursed.

However, there are significant gaps in coverage for both the JobSeeker and JobKeeper payments, as they excluding short-term casuals and many temporary visa holders.

Even for those eligible, the administrative processes are too cumbersome to provide short-term sickness support.

We need to keep thinking outside the box

The simplest approach would be to build on our current employer-provided schemes. This would see employers pay their casual workers when sick, and then be reimbursed by the government.

The cost of this is unlikely to be particularly onerous, unless we have a large second outbreak of the virus (which this measure is designed to avoid). It would be available only to a subset of workers for a limited period.

Read more: It’s hard to know when to come out from under the doona. It’ll be soon, but not yet

Checks and balances could be built in.

Employees might be required to provide some health evidence. This could vary over time and across region, depending on the risk profile and the availability of services. But given the push to expand testing, asking people to have a virus test might be entirely feasible and desirable.

This would mean them being off work until they received their results, but this is the strategy we need for a COVID-safe nation.

The federal government has already shown an impressive ability to adapt existing social security support to the unprecedented challenge of this pandemic.

A little more thinking outside the box may be needed if Australia is to successfully negotiate the next stages of re-opening the economy.

– ref. If we want workers to stay home when sick, we need paid leave for casuals – https://theconversation.com/if-we-want-workers-to-stay-home-when-sick-we-need-paid-leave-for-casuals-138431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Dane, Lecturer, University of Melbourne

Australia’s literary journals are produced in a fragile ecosystem propped up by a patchwork of volunteer labour, generous patrons and, with any luck, a small slice of government funding.

The Sydney Review of Books, the Australian Book Review and Overland were among a group of publications who sought four-year funding from the Australia Council in 2020 but were unsuccessful.

These publications join the ranks of many others – among them Meanjin and Island – defunded by state or federal arts funding bodies in recent years.

Read more: The Meanjin funding cuts: a graceless coup?

These magazines are vital for today’s publishing industry. For many authors literary magazines provide the first opportunity for publication. For editors and arts administrators, they provide a training ground for life-long careers in Australia’s creative sector.

The past decade has seen a steady decline in arts funding going to individuals and organisations. According to Chairman of the Copyright Agency and former media executive, Kim Williams, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald:

[…] if funding for literature had been maintained as in the mid-70s, considering inflation and population growth, it should be at $12 million, at least. Today, it stands at just $5 million (compared with $4.2 million 30 years ago).

The list of defunded writing-focused organisations in the most recent multi-year funding round is stark. Those losing their multi-year status include Artlink, Eyeline, Art Monthly, the Australian Script Centre, Playwriting Australia, Sydney Writer’s Festival, The Wheeler Centre and Brisbane Writers Festival.

Without securing medium-term support, these organisations face an uncertain future.

Vital discourse

In response to the 2020 funding announcement, editor of Australian Book Review, Peter Rose, stated the decision demonstrates

little understanding of [the magazine sector’s] contribution to the literary ecology, and no appreciation of the dire consequences for readers, authors, contributors and publishers.

The cultural discussions within the pages of literary journals set the agenda for the more higher-profile but slower-moving institutions such as publishers, prizes and festivals.

Literary magazines are often the first place authors are published. Against the backdrop of an industry largely staffed by white, middle-class people, small magazines are at the forefront of bringing more Australian writing to the surface from writers of colour, First Nations writers, disabled writers, trans writers and working-class writers, challenging those who hold power at the top of the sector.

Read more: Express Media is unique and young people need it

Writing in 2015 about the position magazines such as Island or Overland occupy, Emmett Stinson noted these publications:

[…] are essential to contemporary literary culture: they showcase new and emerging writers; […] offer more extended literary debates and discussions than the broadsheets; comprise a venue for journalism that contains views outside of the liberal mainstream; serve as rallying points for different communities of readers and coteries of authors […]

Ben Etherington’s essay about the parallel lives and deaths of Mudrooroo and Les Murray, Cher Tan’s exposition and critique of taste production on the internet, and Blak Brow – which was written, edited, illustrated, curated and performed by First Nations creators – are among countless examples of the ways literary magazines carve out space for critique, expression, consideration and reflection.

In shifting funding away from small magazines, we lose the place for these discussions.

Not a competition

Uncertainty, instability and fragility are perhaps the defining characteristics of small magazines.

The decisions to not fund literary magazines not only have a significant impact on the individual publications, but also to Australian cultural discourse.

What gets published within the pages of these magazines can entertain us, it can inspire us to critically examine the world around us, and can help us understand culture that moves us.

Vibrant discussion about culture, society and the arts does not happen by accident. It must be carefully nurtured and requires financial support.

The Australia Council make extremely difficult decisions about what gets funded and what doesn’t.

Not every organisation and publication and festival can receive funding. Those who don’t secure funding are no more or less worthy than those who do. Reduced financial support for Australia’s creative endeavours encourages artists to turn against one another in judgement of what should and should not receive funding.

Australian artists entertain us, challenge us and allow us to see things from different perspectives. Fulfilling a capitalist desire for competition, however, only distracts from the importance of Australian artists and the contribution the creative sector makes to our lives.

– ref. Literary magazines are often the first place new authors are published. We can’t lose them – https://theconversation.com/literary-magazines-are-often-the-first-place-new-authors-are-published-we-cant-lose-them-137900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW

As Australia’s coronavirus restrictions are gradually lifted, we may well see an upswing in cases of COVID-19. The World Health Organisation has warned of the need for “extreme vigilance” in countries that are now emerging from lockdown.

A vaccine remains the best possible tool to guard against the virus. But with a vaccine still months or even years away, we will have to rely on other epidemic control measures, of which there are five key pillars.

Read more: Australia starts to re-open, but the premiers have the whip hand on timing

1. Finding every new case

We need to find and isolate every new case of COVID-19, to prevent transmission. Testing is the way we identify cases. Because even people without symptoms can transmit the virus, the testing regime should include high-risk, asymptomatic people.

Read more: To get on top of the coronavirus, we also need to test people without symptoms

Expanded testing criteria in some states allow any doctor to order a test if they suspect COVID-19, but national criteria still do not recommend testing of high-risk people (such as family contacts) who do not have symptoms.

In closed settings where COVID-19 cases have been identified – such as an aged care facility, cruise ship or household – everyone exposed should be tested, as there is a high rate of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection that would otherwise be missed.

This was not done aboard the Ruby Princess cruise ship, where only those with symptoms were tested. This may have resulted in missed infections and further outbreaks. It is vital to avoid further incidents like this as we move out of lockdown.

2. Rigorous contact tracing

Every person who has come into contact with a known COVID-19 case needs to be traced and quarantined for two weeks. Ideally, they should be tested. Using the COVIDSafe app will help identify all contacts more thoroughly.

3. Continued social distancing

Extreme social distancing measures such as home lockdowns are now coming to an end in Australia. But we should keep practising lesser measures, such as maintaining a distance of 1.5 metres from other people.

4. Ongoing travel bans

Travel bans prevent infections being imported from countries with severe epidemics. In Australia, more than 60% of cases up to May 12 were imported through travel. Keeping the borders closed will allow further lifting of restrictions within Australia.

It is also important to continue quarantining return travellers, and testing Australians arriving home from high-risk countries. The Emirates airline has gone further, announcing COVID-19 testing for all passengers.

5. Face masks

Everyone in the United States has been advised to wear a face mask, because peak transmission occurs in the two days before symptom onset or on the first day. This can help flatten the curve, even if mask use is only modestly effective, especially if combined with social distancing.

It is not a recommendation at this stage in Australia, but masks can also help ease restrictions safely, and may be something to consider in the coming months in crowded public places.

Know your enemy

Besides on-the-ground tactics such as widespread testing and contact tracing, we also need a clear understanding of infectious disease epidemiology, and defined criteria to alert us when we may be heading into an epidemic period.

In countries that have flattened the curve and achieved low incidence of COVID-19, such as Australia and New Zealand, there has been talk of “elimination” of the disease.

Read more: We may well be able to eliminate coronavirus, but we’ll probably never eradicate it. Here’s the difference

But because of the low total infection numbers in these countries, most people remain susceptible to COVID-19. This means fresh outbreaks are possible in the 12-24 months or longer until we have a vaccine.

The concepts of “elimination”, “eradication” and “control” arose from vaccination programs. Eradication is global, whereas elimination is national or regional, and “control” is a goal when elimination is not possible. For measles, outbreaks may still occur during elimination, usually imported through travel, but do not lead to sustained transmission.

The World Health Organisation criteria for the elimination of measles include:

• low incidence with an R0 below 1 (meaning each person with the disease infects less than one other)

• high-quality surveillance

• high population immunity.

But with no vaccine for COVID-19, low incidence and high population immunity are mutually exclusive propositions. For a novel disease with no vaccine, it is premature to talk about eradication.

Ideal infections for elimination and eradication have no presymptomatic transmission and no animal host – for these reasons, eradication of COVID-19 is unlikely.

Read more: We may well be able to eliminate coronavirus, but we’ll probably never eradicate it. Here’s the difference

This means for the time being at least, we need to aim for “control” of COVID-19 – keeping the disease at a manageable level. For this, we need to differentiate between sustained community transmission and sporadic, non-sustaining outbreaks.

Widespread testing is the key to this. It will tell us how much infection is present, and if it is increasing. A stark reminder of the consequences of failure to test is the case of the United States, where the growth of the epidemic was not detected until it was too late.

How do we distinguish between sustained and non-sustained outbreaks? One possible definition of a sustained outbreak would be a certain number of generations of transmission from an original case. Another would be demonstrating ongoing community transmission over a defined period of time (such as three months), or a rise in the R0 value, a measure of how strongly the outbreak is growing. Contact tracing will clearly be vital to assessing this.

Detection of a sustained outbreak would be a warning sign that we are potentially heading into another epidemic period. This might therefore signal the need for increased testing, stronger social distancing, and other measures.

It is likely we will face alternating epidemic and non-epidemic periods, and will need to continue to manage COVID-19 with intermittent returns to stronger restrictions. That is, until we have a vaccine, at which point we can begin working towards bringing the COVID-19 crisis to a genuine close.

– ref. As restrictions ease, here are 5 crucial ways for Australia to stay safely on top of COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/as-restrictions-ease-here-are-5-crucial-ways-for-australia-to-stay-safely-on-top-of-covid-19-138000

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elek Pafka, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Urban Design, University of Melbourne

The coronavirus pandemic has left many people questioning the relationship between urban density and healthy cities. After all, physical distancing has been the most common measure to contain the spread of the virus. But this doesn’t mean higher-density cities are necessarily more vulnerable and lower-density cities more resilient to the pandemic.

Some say high density is a key factor. Others argue it is unrelated. Evidence invoked on both sides has often been anecdotal. Advocates of lower densities choose cities such as New York or Madrid as examples of the perils of high density, while advocates of higher densities point to Hong Kong or Seoul.

Much of the time such debates are blind to the differences between various kinds of urban densities. Too little attention is paid to what urban density actually means. Density in cities takes on a broad range of meanings, such as density of buildings, residents or jobs.

Read more: Urban density matters – but what does it mean?

There is often confusion between internal densities within buildings, which vary widely with wealth, and the external densities of street life, which we share. To complicate things further, each of these concepts can be applied to a range of scales, from a building to a neighbourhood to a metropolis.

High internal densities linked to spread

So what kind of density is relevant for the spread of coronavirus? It has become increasingly clear COVID-19 is mainly transmitted through extended close contact, particularly in enclosed spaces, where droplets and aerosols accumulate. The density that matters is internal population density – generally measured as square metres per person.

Thus, high-risk places can include dormitories, open-plan offices, churches, hospitals, public transport, planes and cruise ships. The evidence to date points to much less transmission through casual contacts in outdoor spaces such as streets or parks.

Read more: Who’s most affected on public transport in the time of coronavirus?

A well-documented study of an outbreak in Seoul illustrates the micro-spatial logic of COVID-19. Of the 131 infected people, 94 were working in a crowded open-plan call centre on a single level of a high-rise building. Despite a high density of people on the site, only three other people in the building were infected.

The infected workers also transmitted the virus to 34 family members within their homes located in various parts of the city. Again, the internal densities are what matters for these infections.

Why do other densities matter less?

Neither gross residential densities of suburbs or neighbourhoods nor overall metropolitan densities necessarily reflect conditions at the scale of human encounter that determines transmission risks. There are two main reasons for this.

First, densities at the street or walkable neighbourhood scale can differ vastly from metropolitan or postcode averages. A local main street or transit node, for instance, can be dense when the average is low.

Second, a short physical distance between people is not the same thing as social encounter. The density of quarantine accommodation (such as a hotel) may be much higher than that of an aged-care facility, but we have seen the latter can be quite lethal.

Internal densities are geared to wealth. This means some people live and work under conditions where they can adapt to this virus and some do not. If we look at the densities in New York, for example, we find COVID-19 cases so far do not correlate with the density of Manhattan. Instead, cases are concentrated in the outer suburban areas of Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and The Bronx.

What does this mean for our cities?

So what does this all mean for the design and planning of a healthy city? Some might be tempted to propose “pandemic-safe” urban forms similar to the anti-urban utopias of the early 20th century. But if urban form is solely conceived to distance people, to eliminate the friction of social interaction, it will also eliminate urban buzz, reduce economic productivity, sociability, walkability and ultimately public health as well.

Read more: What makes a city tick? Designing the ‘urban DMA’

Instead, we should use this crisis as an opportunity to rethink urban resilience from a broad and nuanced public health perspective. How do we design a more adaptable city that maximises capacities for change in both its architecture and urban design? How do we undo the rigidities of the “master plan”?

As urban sociologist Richard Sennett put it, how to design a city that works like an accordion – where people can spread out when necessary and vice versa? What we need to do is design a more equitable city without the internal densities that have proven so deadly.

– ref. As coronavirus forces us to keep our distance, city density matters less than internal density – https://theconversation.com/as-coronavirus-forces-us-to-keep-our-distance-city-density-matters-less-than-internal-density-137790

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Slonim, Professor of Economics, University of Sydney

It’s 18 days since the government launched its digital contact-tracing app COVIDSafe. The latest figure we have for downloads is 5.4 million, on May 8, about 29% of smartphone users aged 14 and over.

My own mini-survey suggests that in Sydney and Melbourne the takeup could already be 40% – a figure the government has mentioned as a target – while in other places it is much lower.

Oddly, it’s information the government isn’t sharing with us.

Total number of COVIDSafe app users (millions)

The importance of downloading and using the app is growing day by day as we relax restrictions. We are able to see what has happened in countries such as South Korea that have relaxed restrictions and then experienced a second wave.

5.4 million Australians after 13 days is a promising start.

As can be seen in the above graph produced by my colleague Demetris Christodoulou and me, 5.4 million downloads represents about 28.7% of Australians with smartphones.

Read more: Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy predicts more than 50% take-up of COVID tracing app

It compares favourably to the 22.4% of Singaporeans with smartphones who downloaded their app within 13 days of its launch.

But the government is only making public a single figure indicating “total” downloads. It would be far more useful if it provided disaggregated community, city and state level data, and below, I attempt to fill the breach.

Letting us know more about which communities are downloading the app would help with health, motivation and transparency.

Health

Knowledge about potentially-dramatic variations in where the app was being downloaded could help guide policy.

Hypothetically speaking, if 70% of Melbourne’s smartphone users had downloaded the app but only 20% of Adelaide’s users, this could have distinct implications for the ability to successfully trace COVID-19 outbreaks in the respective cities and for the right amount of easing of restrictions in each city.

It could also help residents of those cities make more informed decisions about their own safety, such as whether and how to shop and whether to wear a mask.

Motivation

While COVIDSafe originally generated more than 500,000 daily downloads, the number has fallen to less than 100,000, suggesting that new efforts to motivate more downloads is urgently needed.

Providing geographical details could energise downloads in three ways.

First, people often feel enormous pride when their community steps up to help others. Knowing how well the community is doing is likely to motivate more people to help.

Read more: COVIDSafe tracking app reviewed: the government delivers on data security, but other issues remain

Second, knowing how well other communities are doing can be a powerful incentive to catch up; few people want to be in the community that isn’t doing its part.

Third, if state leaders make decisions about relaxing restrictions partly on the basis of local downloads, community members will see a direct connection between downloading the app and the freedoms that will be available to them.

Transparency

The government’s appeal to download the app is built around trust.

It has asked us to trust it by downloading the app. In return it should trust us with better information.

People in Adelaide, Alice Springs, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, Darwin, Geelong, the Gold Coast, Hobart, Launceston, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Sydney, Townsville, Wollongong, rural communities and other places deserve access to information the government already has that could help them make better choices.

The sort of data authorities are keeping to themselves

Given the lack of transparency to date, I conducted my own online survey among 876 residents of Sydney, Melbourne and regional communities with less than 50,000 people.

My survey results, run with a sample of people using the online survey platform PureProfile, indicate the proportion of people who had downloaded the app by May 11 was 50.5% in Sydney, 44.0% in Melbourne and 36.1% in less populated communities.

Controlling for age and gender, there was no significant difference between downloads in Sydney and Melbourne. Both were significantly higher than rural communities.

Read more: Contact tracing apps: a behavioural economist’s guide to improving uptake

Restricting the responses to people who have a mobile phone that is capable of downloading the app, the proportion of downloads increases to 53.8% in Sydney, 47.8% in Melbourne and 41.2% in less populated communities. An extra 7.2%, 6.9% and 5.7% of respondents said they would either definitely or probably download the app in the next week.

This survey evidence indicates that there are stark regional differences in the downloads, and that although the national level of downloads is about 29%, some locations such as Sydney and Melbourne may have already surpassed (or will soon supass) the 40% government stated target.

Of course the government shouldn’t rely these survey results, because it’s got the actual information. It is time it shared the detailed download information it has with us, both to reciprocate our trust and let us make more informed decisions.

– ref. In some places 40% of us may have downloaded COVIDSafe. Here’s why the government should share what it knows – https://theconversation.com/in-some-places-40-of-us-may-have-downloaded-covidsafe-heres-why-the-government-should-share-what-it-knows-138323

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Baerbel Koribalski, Senior research scientist, CSIRO

A team of US and South African researchers has published highly detailed images of the largest X-shaped “radio galaxy” ever discovered – PKS 2014-55.

Notably, they’ve helped resolve ongoing confusion about the galaxy’s unusual shape.

The spectacular new images were taken using the 64-antenna MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, by an international research team led by Bill Cotton of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Zooming in on a cosmic giant

Our research team also took detailed images of galaxy PKS 2014-55 last year, as part of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe project led by astrophysicist Ray Norris. We used CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope in Western Australia, which just completed its first set of pilot astronomical surveys.

Thanks to its innovative “radio cameras”, ASKAP can rapidly map very large areas of the sky to catalogue millions of objects emitting radio waves, from nearby supernova remnants to distant galaxies.

The prominent X-shape of PKS 2014-55 is made up of two pairs of giant lobes consisting of hot jets of electrons. These jets spurt outwards from a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s heart.

The lobes emit electromagnetic radiation in the form of radio waves, which can only be detected by radio telescopes like ASKAP. Humans can’t see radio waves. But if we could, from Earth PKS 2014-55 would look about the same size as the Moon.

Read more: What the universe looks like when viewed with radio eyes

What makes a radio galaxy?

Typically, radio galaxies have only one pair of lobes. One is a “jet” and the other a “counter-jet”.

These jets expand into the surrounding space at nearly the speed of light. They initially move in a straight line, but twist and bend into many marvellous shapes as they encounter their surroundings.

Centaurus A, seen below, is an example of a giant elliptical galaxy with two prominent radio lobes.

Galaxy PKS 2014-55’s giant X-shape, with two pairs of lobes emerging at very different angles, is highly unusual.

What makes the lobes?

To understand why having two pairs of lobes is unusual, we first need to understand what creates the lobes.

Nearly all big galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their centre.

In an active galaxy, powerful jets of charged particles can emerge from the area around the supermassive black hole. Astronomers believe these are emitted from near the poles of the black hole, which is why there are two of them, and they usually point in opposite directions.

When the black hole’s activity stops, the jets stop growing and the material in them flows back towards the centre. Thus, what we see as one lobe of a radio galaxy is made up of both a jet spurting out, and the backflow material.

A mystery solved

In the past, there were two major theories for why PKS 2014-55 has two pairs of lobes.

The first suggested there were actually two massive active black holes at the galaxy’s centre, each emitting two powerful jets.

The second theory suggested the supermassive black hole had undergone a spin flip. This is when a rotating black hole’s spin axis has a sudden change in orientation, resulting in a second pair of jets at a different angle from the first pair.

But the recent observations from the South African MeerKAT telescope strongly suggest a third possibility: that the two larger lobes are the fast-moving particles zooming out from the black hole, while the two smaller lobes are the backflow looping around to fall back in.

The MeerKAT team achieved high-resolution images ten times more sensitive than our ASKAP pilot observations conducted here in Australia last year.

A cosmic wonder

Using CSIRO’s ASKAP telescope, our team observed the “purple butterfly” of PKS 2014-55 to be an enormous cosmic structure. It spans at least five million light years – about 20 times the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.

PKS 2014-55 is located on the outskirts of a massive cluster of galaxies known as Abell 3667. It was discovered more than 60 years ago using the Mills Cross Telescope at CSIRO’s old Fleurs field station in New South Wales.

The galaxy’s first detailed radio picture was taken by Ron Ekers in 1969.

Read more: A brain transplant for one of Australia’s top telescopes

ASKAP

The ASKAP telescope we used to capture PKS 2014-55 is an array of 36 radio dishes laid out in a pattern six kilometres in diameter. Together, the dishes make up a large radio telescope that uses Earth’s rotation to produce sharp images of astronomical sources near and far.

Each dish is 12m wide and equipped with new technologies developed by CSIRO and industry partners. ASKAP is a fast survey machine, taking radio images over very wide areas of the sky. Several surveys of the entire sky are expected to start next year.

We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji as the traditional owners of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory site.

– ref. Experts solve the mystery of a giant X-shaped galaxy, with a monster black hole as its engine – https://theconversation.com/experts-solve-the-mystery-of-a-giant-x-shaped-galaxy-with-a-monster-black-hole-as-its-engine-138205

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

Earth had several periods of high carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and high temperatures over the last several million years. Can you explain what caused these periods, given that there was no burning of fossil fuels or other sources of human created carbon dioxide release during those times?

Burning fossil fuels or vegetation is one way to put carbon dioxide into the air – and it is something we have become very good at. Humans are generating nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, mostly by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide stays in the air for centuries to millennia and it builds up over time. Since we began the systematic use of coal and oil for fuel, around 300 years ago, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has gone up by almost half.

Apart from the emissions we add, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air go up and down as part of the natural carbon cycle, driven by exchanges between the air, the oceans and the biosphere (life on earth), and ultimately by geological processes.

Natural changes in carbon dioxide

Every year, carbon dioxide concentrations rise and fall a little as plants grow in spring and summer and die off in the autumn and winter. The timing of this seasonal rise and fall is tied to northern hemisphere seasons, as most of the land surface on Earth is there.

The oceans also play an active role in the carbon cycle, contributing to variations over a few months to slow shifts over centuries. Ocean water takes up carbon dioxide directly in an exchange between the air and seawater. Tiny marine plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and many microscopic marine organisms use carbon compounds to make shells. When these marine micro-organisms die and sink to the seafloor, they take the carbon with them.

Collectively, the biosphere (ecosystems on land and in soils) and the oceans are absorbing about half of all human-emitted carbon dioxide, and this slows the rate of climate change. But as the climate continues to change and the oceans warm up further, it is not clear whether the biosphere and oceans will continue absorbing such a large fraction of our emissions. As water warms, it is less able to absorb carbon dioxide, and as the climate changes, many ecosystems become stressed and are less able to photosynthesise carbon dioxide.

Earth’s deep climate history

On time scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have varied hugely, and so has global climate.

This long-term carbon cycle involves the formation and decay of the Earth’s surface itself: tectonic plate activity, the build-up and weathering of mountain chains, prolonged volcanic activity, and the emergence of new seafloor at active mid-ocean faults.

Most of the carbon stored in the Earth’s crust is in the form of limestone, created from the carbon-based shells of marine organisms that sank to the ocean floor millions of year ago.

Carbon dioxide is added to the air when volcanoes erupt, and it is taken out of the air as rocks and mountain ranges weather and wear down. These processes typically take millions of years to add or subtract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Read more: Climate explained: how volcanoes influence climate and how their emissions compare to what we produce

In the present day, volcanoes add only a little carbon dioxide to the air, around 1% of what human activity is currently contributing. But there have been times in the past where volcanic activity has been vastly greater and has spewed large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

An example is around 250 million years ago, when prolonged volcanic activity raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dramatically. These were volcanic eruptions on a vast scale – lasting for around two million years and causing a mass extinction.

In the more recent geological past, the past 50 million years, carbon dioxide levels have been gradually dropping overall and the climate has been cooling, with some ups and downs. Once carbon dioxide concentrations became low enough (around 300 parts per million) between two and three million years ago, the current ice age cycle began, but the warming our emissions are causing is larger than the natural cooling trend.

Read more: Climate explained: why we won’t be heading into an ice age any time soon

While Earth’s climate has changed significantly in the past, it happened on geological time scales. The carbon in the oil and coal we burn represents carbon dioxide taken up by vegetation hundreds of millions of years ago and then deposited through geological processes over millennia. We have burned a significant proportion within a few centuries.

If human emissions of carbon dioxide continue to increase through this century, we could reach levels not seen for tens of millions of years, when Earth had a much warmer climate with much higher sea levels and no ice sheets.

– ref. Climate explained: what caused major climate change in the past? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-what-caused-major-climate-change-in-the-past-137874