Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Orlando, Researcher: Children and Technology, Western Sydney University

COVID-19 has left parents grappling with the challenges of online learning, entertainment and work. It’s natural the amount of time children spend using screens will now increase.

But that’s OK. Screen time recommendations we’ve enforced for so long no longer apply to our situation. There are ways to make the best of kids’ increased use of screens.

More than just screen ‘time’

Screen “time” has become an important aspect our health and well-being. It relates to measuring how many hours and minutes a person uses a digital screen such as mobile phone, tablet, television or computer.

Screen time has become a particularly important focus for parents who want to help their child establish healthy technology habits.

We gain our screen time recommendations from several sources. These are primarily health and psychology authorities. They include the World Health Organisation, which has published guidelines for children five years old and younger; and the American Academy of Paediatrics and Australian Department of Health, which have each published their own guidelines for children up to 18 years old.

These guidelines bear similarities to each other. They mainly state children under 18 months should get no screen time except for video calls such as Skyping a grandparent. Children aged two to five should limit their use to an hour, ideally watching a screen with an adult.

Read more: Kids at home because of coronavirus? Here are 4 ways to keep them happy (without resorting to Netflix)

Guidelines for school-aged children and adolescents are less definitive. There are no recommended minutes or hours per day. The guidelines depend on the lifestyle of the child, and it’s left to the parent to manage.

If we dissect published screentime recommendations, there are three factors embedded in what comprises healthy technology use.

They include:

1. time using a screen

2. quality of screen content

3. who you use a screen with.

Screen “time” gets all the airplay, but with families confined to home, the other two factors – quality and screen buddies – are just as important, if not more, for healthy technology use.

Screen quality

The benefits of technology on children’s health, well-being, social and emotional outcomes, and school achievement, depends less on time and more on the type of content they engage with when using a screen.

Consider a five-year-old watching 30-minutes of early childhood educational content, such as the ABC’s PlaySchool. Compare this to the same child playing 30 minutes of a highly violent video game.

Both involve 30 minutes of screen time, but the experience for the child and the impact on them will be vastly different with each.

Quality screen content is defined by three combined features: it is interactive, educational and age appropriate.

But just because something is categorised as “educational” doesn’t mean it’s a good learning experience. The term educational is often used as a way of organising apps in the App Store or Google Play store, or to market apps.

Truly educational content requires a child to think, be creative and socially interactive. These kinds of apps don’t have too many distracting bells and whistles but aim to keep the child’s attention on the learning.

Read more: Stop worrying about screen ‘time’. It’s your child’s screen experience that matters

A great example of an educational app for your children is Thinkrolls Space. The app has fun, odd-ball alien-themed puzzles that encourage problem solving, as well as thinking logically and strategically.

The app design encourages children to persevere to solve the problem. And it doesn’t encourage in-app purchases to easily power up without solving the problem.

For high school children the app DragonBox Algebra 12+ is an innovative STEM game that helps supercharge kids’ learning of algebra.

The game is designed to help kids build a strong understanding, with lots of opportunities to practise new skills and then move through to more complex problems; and it does this is a really fun way.

Screen buddies

It’s not very healthy for a child of any age to be alone on a device for hours on end. Engaging with your child and varying how a child engages socially when using a screen is important to developing healthy screen habits.

This is sometimes explained using the term “co-view”, which is when a child uses a screen with their parent who can explain ideas to them.

Read more: Parents, cut yourself some slack on screen time limits while you’re stuck at home

“Co-engaging” is a much more powerful idea for older children. It simply means using a screen with someone equally engaged (not just an onlooker or explainer). It may be playing an online game with a parent, or another person.

It can also mean engaging with the online content with someone virtually, such as Skyping a class friend or taking part in a virtual study group.

Tips for parents

Healthy screen use is about balancing all three factors: time, quality and buddies. So, if you think your child may be using a screen for longer periods of time because of the changes COVID-19 has brought, then ensure screen quality and screen buddies are in check. You can do this now, by:

• setting up a time to engage with a screen, together with you child, in way that than is more than just watching on as a bystander

• checking through the apps and games your child currently uses. Try to identify which are quality (educational, interactive and age-appropriate)

• looking for new quality educational experiences online for your child. Don’t settle for something simply labelled “educational”. Investigate it and make sure it qualifies as a great educational experience.

Too much screen time is not the end of the world. Aiming for healthy screentime using all three factors – time, quality and buddies – is much more important.

– ref. Forget old screen ‘time’ rules during coronavirus. Here’s what you should focus on instead – https://theconversation.com/forget-old-screen-time-rules-during-coronavirus-heres-what-you-should-focus-on-instead-135053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Sanderson, Professor and Inaugural Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture, UNSW

The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has warned coronavirus poses “an existential threat to our continent”. Evidence from past crises shows not everyone is affected equally; the most vulnerable people invariably suffer the worst. This threat will strike worst at the 53 million-or-so people living in the thousands of dense informal settlements, or slums, that pack sub-Saharan Africa’s fast-growing cities.

The risk is particularly high in slums because of the combination of poverty and poor planning.

Poverty leads to fewer choices – do you spend your money on food or medicine? – and few safety nets. Poor planning, if any, has led to millions of people living in largely neglected overcrowded settlements. Their houses are built of waste materials, with little or no running water, electricity, garbage disposal or sanitation.

“Social distancing” is next to impossible when a settlement can have just 380 toilets for 20,000 people. Even before pandemics strike, such places erode the health of residents, causing and worsening ailments that include respiratory diseases.

The call from the United Nations is for rich countries to provide more funding for Africa. But rich donor countries are themselves fighting the crisis and are unlikely to focus their attention elsewhere.

This leaves Africa in desperate need of resources. For example, Central African Republic, home to nearly 5 million people, has just three ventilators.

A history of deadly crises

Tragically, Africa is no stranger to crises, including pandemics. In 2014 Ebola swept through West Africa, killing more than 11,000 people.

Lessons emerged from this experience. One was the power of rumour and misinformation – especially in dense urban neighbourhoods. For instance, it was said that Ebola always kills. The claim created panic and led to households hiding sick relatives, resulting in fewer reported cases.

The explosion of social media use – even since 2014 – increases this risk.

In 2018, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) recorded its tenth outbreak of Ebola in 40 years. The outbreak affected the regional capital Goma, a city that is no stranger to crises, having experienced disaster, conflict and a huge refugee influx.

In 1994 hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the Rwandan genocide arrived in Goma. A cholera epidemic that killed nearly 12,000 people followed. Goma endured years of civil war (along with the rest of the country) and a volcanic eruption in 2002.

Now the city is facing coronavirus, having recorded its first case in March. A recent Los Angeles Times article notes that, while chronically under-resourced, Goma’s recent previous experience may help the city fight coronavirus:

Due to the Ebola crisis, the city is dotted with checkpoints where everybody is subjected to a temperature check – performed with handheld infrared thermometers – and required to wash their hands at chlorinated water stations before being allowed to pass.

A testing laboratory is also being built.

This is something, but such measures are likely to have limited impact in slums.

Predictions of disaster ignored

A decade ago, a World Health Organisation bulletin drew attention to a 2009 study that warned Africa’s urbanisation “is a health hazard for certain vulnerable populations … [that] threatens to create a humanitarian disaster”.

Africa has urbanised substantially in the last 11 years. And its slums have grown at break-neck speed. Africa’s population, now 1.1 billion people, is expected to double by 2050, with up to 80% of that increase in cities, especially in slums.

The coronavirus, whose risk to life and economic impacts threaten to eclipse previous crises, threatens to expose the mismanagement and neglect of Africa’s urbanisation in the most visceral of ways. And the most vulnerable people will pay the highest price, as they always do.

– ref. Coronavirus an ‘existential threat’ to Africa and her crowded slums – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-an-existential-threat-to-africa-and-her-crowded-slums-135829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gillian Triggs, Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne

Grandmothers as social activists? What a radical idea … but one that is increasingly true of today’s generation of grandmothers. Witness the determination and courage of Karen Nettleton in pulling out all the stops to persuade the Australian government to rescue her grandchildren from a Syrian refugee camp.

A sweet memory of my time as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission was being asked by my executive assistant to look down from my Pitt Street office to the Grandmothers for Refugees singing in the street below to support the commission and its advocacy for refugees detained indefinitely in offshore detention camps. What a delight to see the men in their suits walk by in bemused wonderment. How mistaken to dismiss these grandmothers as having passed their use-by date.

Why should we be surprised? This generation of grandmothers came from the 60s and 70s, many – and for the first time in history – spending formative years at university with free or minimal fees, marching against Vietnam, experimenting with sexual liberation, burning our bras and “making love not war”. Political activism is mother’s milk to many of the women from those times.

Over the following years, this unique generation of women rode the crest of a wave of opportunity and optimism. The Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1984 … problem of equality fixed. The future was ours. And, to a significant degree, so it has been.

Today, women over 60 are often well-educated and financially independent, having had a fruitful career while also doing a decent job of raising their children. Today, the 60s generation of women is emerging as a political force to be reckoned with.

Not so fast

But wait. How can it be that the position of women in Australia has been in regression over the last 15 years or so? Here are some disturbing facts. The fastest-growing group of homeless people in Australia is not 18-year-old youths sleeping under a bridge, but women over 55. How ignominious and sad to have to ask your son or niece if you can sleep on their sofa for a few weeks as you can no longer pay the rent or the mortgage.

Women retire today on 46% of the superannuation available to men. Why? Because we agree to accept flexible, casual and contract work with little job security or opportunities for promotion. We fall off the superannuation ladder and never catch up, despite providing most unpaid caring work across the nation.

Women are still at the bottom of the employment pyramid in female-dominated industries – as hospital paramedics and cleaners, factory workers, maids and waitresses, in hotels and restaurants and in low-paid teaching and nursing positions. The gender pay gap of around 16% is narrowing with glacial speed.

In 2006, the World Economic Forum’s Gender Index placed Australia 15th globally, broadly among the nations we would most expect to be compared with — New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and the Scandinavian countries. Ten years later, in 2016, we had slipped to 46th. By 2018, we had gone up a few points to 39th. Our 2020 ranking is 44th. We remain today stubbornly consigned to the lower ranks, below Serbia, Bolivia, Laos, Latvia, Cuba and Burundi.

Cheats and double-dippers

The WEF Global Index is measured against four indices: economic participation, health and survival, educational attainment and political empowerment. The good news is that, not surprisingly, Australian women and girls are ranked first in the world for educational attainment.

But now the bad news: we are a 103rd for health, 77th for ministerial positions in government, 49th for political empowerment and 46th for economic participation. Our hopes for fair access to work were raised by Tony Abbott’s promise, as leader of the opposition, of a “rolled-gold” six months’ maternity leave, only to be dashed when the political debate descended into allegations women were “double dippers” and “welfare cheats”. The law for Australian women remains at 18 weeks’ paid maternity leave at minimum wage, compared with Sweden’s paternity leave of 480 days at 80% of salary.

How has it come to this? Why has education not ensured genuine equality? Why are Australia’s women not in the streets demanding fairness from a male-dominated government and corporate sector?

Are we, at heart, just like our grandmothers? Has very little really changed? Are grandmothers, by culture or by a law of nature, destined merely to be sweet, passive, caring and kind; to stand behind their men, support the family, love their grandchildren and seek little for themselves?

Memories of Sarah-Jane

My grandmother, Sarah-Jane, met all these clichéd standards. She was born in the reign of Queen Victoria, in 1899. She admirably met the traditional image of a grandmother: pretty, even in old age, white-haired and blue-eyed.

In 1958, as we stood on the deck of the Iberia, the flagship of the Orient and Pacific Line, leaving from Tilbury Docks for Australia, my mother said, “Give your grandmother a special wave. She is old and we may not see her again.” Sarah-Jane was 62, dressed in black, wearing pearl earrings and 60-denier lisle stockings, wrinkled at her ankles. Widowed at 53, with few financial resources, she had never been employed. Sarah-Jane was largely dependent on her daughters and sons-in-law.

She came to Melbourne several times to visit us and lived to be 89.

Sarah-Jane avoided any sort of disagreement or controversy in private, let alone in the public arena. “A lady’s name should appear in the newspapers only three times in her life: on birth, marriage and death.” She would have been horrified to know that her granddaughter was the subject of 42 satirical cartoons and over 60,000 words (and counting) of newsprint castigating me for my work as president of the AHRC.

For Sarah-Jane, family was all. She believed wholeheartedly in the adage that blood is thicker than water. As one of a typically large Victorian family of eight siblings, she was never particularly interested in widening her small group of friends. I have followed her directions for a successful dinner party.

It was bad form, she believed, to engage in one-to-one private conversations; a general conversation among the group on a neutral topic was the desired objective. Sex and religion should never be discussed. In this, I have strayed from her protocol. But I also prefer a wide-ranging debate at dinner. When I was first married to my husband and joined international diplomatic life as a “trailing spouse”, I remember him accusing me of conducting seminars at official dinner parties!

Read more: Friday essay: this grandmother tree connects me to Country. I cried when I saw her burned

A driving force

Sarah-Jane might have been surprised to know that she has been a driving motivator in my life. As a teenager in the early 60s, I have a vivid memory of one of her visits. She was sitting up in bed, counting out her small change on the bedspread to see if she could stretch her money to buy a Christmas present for each member of the family. The sum total was pitiful.

Sarah-Jane had no means to increase her funds beyond whatever the family’s largesse had provided her. Mercifully, my parents were in business as jewellers and were, indeed, generous. At Christmas, we each received a modest gift from Sarah-Jane, and I treasured mine.

Yet another seemingly insignificant incident compounded my understanding of my grandmother’s loss of autonomy. Like Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Sarah-Jane always wore pearls: three-strand necklaces and earrings. As the earrings were clipped on (pierced ears were vulgar), she was constantly losing one.

To go out in public without her pearls was unthinkable. She would ask my father, through the agency of my mother, to buy her new ones. As the saga of the lost earring was oft-repeated, my father became increasingly annoyed, but would eventually relent and provide another. I was struck at the time by the ignominy of Sarah-Jane’s position.

Today, if I had lost such an item, I would simply buy a replacement without a second thought. I doubt she was ever able to enjoy that freedom. Such minuscule details of ordinary life mark how things have changed for women today who have financial autonomy.

Even as a young girl, I was mortified by the evident frustration of an older woman who had so little financial independence. I vowed never to be in that position. I knew, instinctively, that to reach whatever potential one might have, it was essential, as Virginia Woolf well understood, to have “a room of one’s own”. That is not to say that money has been a catalyst for my work over the decades, but rather that a reliable income is vital to achieving autonomy.

Sarah-Jane also had a steely inner core. Arriving home after school one day, I was shocked when she asked me, “Will you do the ironing or shall I?” As she’d left the house for work that morning, my mother had apparently airily asked my grandmother to iron the ever-mounting pile of sheets, shirts and napkins, always the last household chore to be tackled.

From my mother’s point of view, as Sarah-Jane was at home all day, this seemed to be an entirely reasonable request. Not so for Sarah-Jane. The heat of the summer was inescapable and enervating. She was probably about 70 years old. Far better to ask a healthy teenager. I, of course, agreed to do the ironing, but filed away for future reference that my grandmother was smarter than others gave her credit for!

As Sarah-Jane sank into the oblivion of Alzheimer’s, she lived out her last years in an aged-care residence in London. Whenever I returned to England, I would visit my tranquil, beautifully dressed grandmother, who, having no idea who I was, said to me, “You’re a nice young girl. Do come to see me again.” I would leave in tears, but grateful that Sarah-Jane had at least found some sort of serenity.

Today’s grandmothers

Delving into these sepia-tinted flashes from the past, I am surprised by how powerful — even hurtful — they remain. Why would I care today about such fleeting incidents, which one might have imagined would quickly fade? I do not know. But perhaps the psychologists would say that such early experiences shape our adult lives in profound, lasting and unexpected ways.

Sarah-Jane would not recognise my 21st-century role as a grandmother. At 74, I am working, travelling and continuing to be outspoken. My grandchildren, Sia (aged four) and Leonard (aged two), live an international life in Paris and are becoming bilingual. I speak to them by Skype and babysit for a couple of weeks in July when the creches and schools are closed for the summer. Every second year, they come to Australia for Christmas.

I have some French and would love to speak to my grandchildren in their first language. Rightly, their parents, my son James and his French partner, Marie, insist that I speak only English, otherwise Sia and Leonard will adopt the easy option of French. Sia thinks I am intellectually rather slow. If I mispronounce a word in French or make a grammatical error (quelle horreur), she corrects me and, in exasperation, employs both the English and French words to ensure I get her point. I love being with such bright, energetic children and am sometimes sad that I am a distant, fly-in, fly-out spectre in their lives.

My relationship with my grandchildren will be very different from many grandparenting relationships of the past. Different but, I hope, just as special. The geographical distance means that I will not be part of the day-to-day lives of Sia and Leonard. I will not be able to pick them up from school and hear their triumphs and woes. I will always be the visitor who swans into town, breaks the household rules with forbidden treats and goes away again. I will not be there to listen to whispered hopes and fears, nor will I be a gentle, calm and constant presence in their lives.

But I will bring to Sia and Leonard that fierce loyalty for family that Sarah-Jane maintained, rightly or wrongly, as well as her warmth and integrity. I hope to be a strong influence in their lives; to stimulate, excite and support them in every way possible. Perhaps I can show them what a woman can achieve in her lifetime, given the opportunity and a dash of determination.

No woman left behind

I suspect many women today grapple with finding a new version of the contemporary grandmother, as they retain a traditional view of a caring woman with little autonomy or life beyond her family. Grandmothers today are likely to be healthy, relatively fit and up for a game of tennis or a ski trip (on the moderate slopes).

With some significant exceptions (for example, those who have no superannuation, live alone or have high medical expenses), today’s grandmother will have financial means of her own, a career and a fruitful, active life. She will nurture her grandchildren, but will be less passive, more actively engaged with the world, freer to rise to her own potential and, I suggest, happier than many grandmothers in the past, with greater self-confidence.

While my generation has been uniquely privileged in so many ways, I believe that, as grandmothers, we should use our remaining years and decades to reach out to our less privileged sisters to bring them with us. Too many women have been left behind. The promises of the 60s and 70s have not been met fully for all Australian women. We grandmothers now have a responsibility to advocate, to be politically active in using our education and financial independence to ensure equality of opportunity and outcome. For all women.

How dismaying that I should have studied for a law degree, a Master of Laws and a PhD, all at the expense of the Australian, American and British taxpayers, while law students today will finish their JD degree $100,000 in debt. As grandmothers, we should be demanding affordable childcare, full superannuation even when on maternity and carers leave, equal pay for equal work, freedom from sexual harassment and bullying in employment, and protection from domestic violence at home.

As grandmothers, what do we have to lose? We are not looking for advancement in our careers. We are strong, healthy and independent. Bravo to Grandmothers for Refugees, the Older Women’s Network and the scores of other women’s advocacy and networking groups. Let us work together to harness the power of today’s generation of grandmothers, who can and will speak up for social justice. Let us work together to achieve the vision of gender equality that we and our political leaders had in the 60s and 70s.

I like to think that, in Sarah-Jane’s quiet way, she would have supported my outspokenness on human rights and forgiven me my notorious media presence. I now understand better the continuing influence she has had on my life, and thank her for it.

Postscript: I am about to leave for Geneva to take up a new role in the United Nations as Assistant High Commissioner for Protection. For the first time in my grandchildren’s lives, I will be only three hours by train from Paris. It seems one should never say never. Maybe in the future I can be a more real presence in their lives than I had believed possible.

This essay is an extract from Grandmothers: Essays by 21st Century Grandmothers edited by Helen Elliott and published by Text.

– ref. Friday essay: today’s grandmothers grew up protesting. Now they have nothing to lose – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-todays-grandmothers-grew-up-protesting-now-they-have-nothing-to-lose-132670

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle O’Shea, Senior Lecturer Sport Management, Western Sydney University

Against a global backdrop of cancelled sports leagues, and as part of their season opening, National Rugby League (NRL) fans recently packed the stands of Townsville’s new Queensland Country Bank Stadium.

Fortunately, professional sporting bodies have now realised social distancing measures can’t be ignored. To maintain fan engagement, sports leagues must rethink their mode of delivery.

Esports is one promising option. This fast-growing, professional video game competition medium is played between individuals or teams. While it encompasses non-sport games, in the context of sports-based games, esports offers an alternate reality where athletes are digitally represented.

Esports is now drawing mass appeal, fitting easily into the online lives many of us lead.

Read more: Stadiums are emptying out globally. So why have Australian sports been so slow to act?

Response in uncertain times

Sports administrators are now faced with unprecedented disruption. Avid sports fans are self-isolating at home, cabin fever is setting in and they are craving their usual sports fix.

Initially, NRL and AFL administrators tried to maintain their season fixtures with no fans, but this quickly became untenable.

As we hunker down for the long haul, extending the AFL season suspension beyond May looks increasingly likely, making the prospect of esports all the more appealing.

Future proofing with esports

The financial cracks in Australia’s leading professional sports leagues are not confined to COVID-19.

Falling free-to-air television views and decreased numbers of match spectators pose a significant commercial threat. Generating revenue primarily from television broadcast rights is no longer sustainable. Thus, esports represents more than a season filler – it’s an opportunity sports administrators have largely ignored, but may need to quickly school themselves on.

Even before this pandemic hit, Australian sports fan engagement was changing. Data released in 2017 showed 11.4 million Australians consumed sports on a smartphone, desktop or tablet during July that year – a 6% increase from June. Growth was 10% among women, compared to 3% among men.

For Australian sports fans, the jump to esports would require little change in consumer behaviour. Other countries are already seeing this shift. The US Major League Soccer (MLS) administrators found 65% of their most devoted fans highlighted FIFA gaming as driving their interest in soccer.

“Gaming is actually more important to us than people playing soccer itself,” said MLS senior director of properties James Ruth.

Last year, a record breaking number (109,000) of worldwide participants competed in Formula 1’s Pro Draft, one stage of the 2019 Formula 1 New Balance Esports Series.

Read more: Are esports the next major league sport?

Esports and COVID-19

Formula 1 has led the rollout of esport contingencies during COVID-19, showing commitment by launching their Virtual Grand Prix series. Running in place of races planned for the postponed season, and featuring several virtual F1 drivers, fans at home can still get their F1 fix.

The National Basketball League (NBA) are more hesitant, but have dipped their toes in the water by promoting an esport competition featuring 16 of the NBA’s top basketball players. It’s likely we’ll see more sporting codes act and experiment with new modes of delivery in the near future.

In Australia, not all clubs were slow to recognise the potential of esports. More than four years ago, Adelaide Crows officials realised their traditional revenue streams were “maxed out” and identified esports as an avenue for growth.

However, the AFL’s commitment has been tentative at best. The NRL have also yet to make any real inroads, but did partner with an Australasian esports media company for a Fortnite event last year.

Not a gendered activity

Esports, like real sports, is not just for men. Research suggests women and men play video games in about equal numbers. According to Venture Bear, in the US alone 11 million women watched a live stream on Twitch last year.

In the Australian market, commercial growth through esports investment could be an influential strategy to seed youth leagues. As marketers seek to attract new fans and strengthen existing fan affiliations, esports’ effects could be twofold.

Esports could attract a new wave of younger sports fans, and bring ancillary opportunities to deepen existing fan engagement.

Read more: Time well spent, not wasted: video games are boosting well-being during the coronavirus lockdown

Keeping traditions going

As we all settle into the pandemic way of life, Australian sports administrators may need to shift from dabbling in esports to developing a more sophisticated and comprehensive esports strategy.

Reliance on traditional income streams and “bums on stadium seats” have left our sports vulnerable and in some cases, looking for a bailout.

Perhaps administrators missed the opportunity to pivot quickly, keeping their fans engaged, their staff employed and their future secure. Either way, during these troubled times, esports may help breathe new life into one of the country’s favourite pastimes.

– ref. With everyone stuck indoors, esports is poised for its time in the sun – https://theconversation.com/with-everyone-stuck-indoors-esports-is-poised-for-its-time-in-the-sun-135559

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dianne McGrath, Environmental Engineering PhD candidate; sustainability and food waste expertise, RMIT University

As a food waste researcher, I’m interested in how humans prepare food, eat and manage leftovers. This interest is not just confined to Earth – it extends to other planets.

I recently spent two weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station in the US state of Utah, and experienced the intimate and challenging conditions of a Mars mission simulation. I was part of a small, isolated team of four with limited choice of food, preparation and cooking options.

I wanted to know how these conditions would affect the food waste we generated. This research is particularly pertinent now, as COVID-19 forces people into social isolation and raises the (real or imagined) risk of food scarcity.

Measuring waste

According to the latest figures, in 2016-17 Australia produced 7.3 million tonnes of food waste. And every year, each one of us sends almost 300kg of food to landfill.

Meanwhile, an estimated 5% of Australians experience food insecurity – inadequate access to, supply of and use of food.

Food waste in landfill produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Tackling this is a key part of taking action on climate change.

The Mars Desert Research Station is run by the Mars Society, a volunteer-driven non-government organisation dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the red planet.

The first agenda item of the daily team meeting each morning was developing the day’s menu. Sharing meals encouraged social cohesion.

My research involved detailing the quantities and nutritional profile of our food waste over the fortnight, comparing inputs with the waste generated.

I collected data for spoilage, preparation and “plate waste” – the food served but not eaten. It was a painstaking process. For each meal, I weighed chopping boards, pots, pans, dishes and utensils containing food scraps. I then washed, dried and reweighed them.

I calculated macronutrients (the main nutrients in the food we eat) as well as micronutrients (those needed by living organisms in tiny amounts).

Food: appreciated, but wasted

Australian households waste around 1.325 kilograms of food each week; our crew produced less than one-tenth of that.

This is not surprising as the food supplied was not perishable, being either dehydrated or tinned. Most waste (86%) was produced during preparation (for example, thick soup stuck to a pot) and 12% was left on plates.

The need to rehydrate food and then cook large meals suitable for sharing (such as rice and pasta) meant food was commonly left in pots and pans. They are stickier, and the food is more commonly overproduced.

Carbohydrates were wasted more than fats or proteins. Carbohydrates such as rice, spaghetti and flour comprised 57% of the total food supply but contributed 63% of waste.

Read more: ‘I could sow the seeds of a new civilisation’: Mars One hopeful’s vision of a stellar future

This is not unusual – carbohydrates provide less nutrient density but more bulk than protein or fats, and are often cheaper. We value individual items in a meal subjectively, and sometimes consciously ensure the most valuable components are fully consumed.

Affluent societies, where food is assured, may not see reducing waste as a necessity, or may value time saving, illness prevention, or freshness over waste avoidance.

But research has shown less waste occurs when food availability is constrained, such as during economic downturns. But even then, some food is still wasted.

Getting the results right

I didn’t want my own low-waste food behaviour to influence my fellow crew members. So unlike them, I consumed a protein shake-based meal for every meal. Monotonous, but necessary to avoid skewed results.

But my colleagues knew I was monitoring them, and they modified their behaviour – a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne Effect.

One crew member said he was conscious to waste less food during preparation and dining. Another said being observed liberated him to dine like he would at home, cleaning his plate entirely, rather than leaving some uneaten (a social custom in some cultures).

Read more: Melbourne wastes 200 kg of food per person a year: it’s time to get serious

The third crew member began keeping water used to rehydrate one meal, and using it to rehydrate the next meal – something he might not have done if not being observed.

This indicates my results probably underestimated how much food would be wasted in an unmonitored scenario.

It’s worth noting our crew wasn’t trained in food and nutrient waste minimisation; trained Mars astronauts may produce less waste.

Know more, do better

My research highlights that non-perishable food can create less waste in constrained circumstances – a finding highly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, waste is more likely when preparing meals that alter in form (such as cooking dried rice) and/or combine multiple ingredients.

Also, waste is generated differently due to individual human behaviour responses and our socioeconomic background.

These lessons are timely. Member states of the United Nations, including Australia, aim to halve food waste by 2030. These steps can help:

• buy only what you need, and will use

• if you run a food business, divert excess consumable food to food rescue organisations and charities that feed the hungry

• where possible, give food waste to animals, such as backyard chooks

• composting food in your backyard or a community garden

• Allow ample time to eat, as more waste is generated during rushed mealtimes.

Humans crave a variety and abundance of food. But self-interest should not allow us to deplete what is actually a shared, limited resource.

Read more: Before we colonise Mars, let’s look to our problems on Earth

– ref. What a simulated Mars mission taught me about food waste – https://theconversation.com/what-a-simulated-mars-mission-taught-me-about-food-waste-132010

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Education Minister Dan Tehan has warned non-government schools that if they fail to open for the next term they will face losing funding.

He said on Thursday that “as part of the funding requirement” a school would have to provide for parents to be “able to send their children to school if they’re working or if the child is safer at school than at home”.

Tehan stressed the medical advice has been it is safe for schools to be open.

Scott Morrison has been very insistent schools should be open to facilitate parents continuing to work, and to provide a safe place for vulnerable children. This was regardless of whether the school had moved to online teaching.

While some state governments, notably NSW and Victoria, are encouraging online learning at home, the states have all agreed to keep schools open for those who need them.

Tehan, who wrote to the Independent Schools Council on Thursday, said the government wanted a consistent approach across all sectors, including the Catholic system, on remaining open.

It had become clear some independent schools weren’t providing on-site learning facilities, at all year levels, for the children of working parents and other children who needed them, he said.

Asked on the ABC how many schools he was talking about, Tehan said it was hard to get a true sense of the number.

Speaking on Sky, he said if schools had moved to online learning they should enable students to go to the school and do that work in a supervised and safe environment.

The government did not want parents to face a choice between going to work or having to stay at home to educate their children, he said.

While the states run government schools, the federal government provides funding to independent schools and the Catholic sector.

– ref. Open or else face funding cut – Minister Tehan’s edict to independent schools – https://theconversation.com/open-or-else-face-funding-cut-minister-tehans-edict-to-independent-schools-136071

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Remember how last year’s Easter felt bizarre because the country was in election-mode? How normal that seems, now everything is surreal, with the nation “holidaying” in this peculiar, unpleasant limbo.

As we contemplate the grimness we should also remember it could be much worse. It’s early days but we’ve dodged the horror of Italy, France, Britain, and the US. So far in Australia, the virus is being contained, the “curve” of new cases flattened.

Nevertheless, this Easter millions of Australians see little but uncertainty ahead, as they worry about their health, their jobs or lack or them, their businesses.

The economic fear inevitably remains dialled high despite a trimmed-down parliament (only 50-plus House of Representatives MPs out of 151) on Wednesday passing the government’s $130 billion wage subsidy package.

Earlier in the week, Scott Morrison had received a Newspoll bounce in his approval, just as Kevin Rudd did in the global financial crisis. Bad as the GFC was, it’s clear this crisis will be much more fraught to exit.

We are only just into the restrictions but already the debate is intensifying about how and when we get out of them – a result of the relatively good news and people’s natural impatience.

The question occupying cooped-up households, half-dead businesses, and anxious governments (and their health advisers) is: what now?

The immediate answer is simple. We need to endure Easter in a virtual monastery. When Health Minister Greg Hunt says “this in many ways is the most important weekend we may face in the whole course of the virus”, it is likely only a minor exaggeration.

The longer term answer to “what now” will involve practical and ethical judgements, and contested views.

The exit strategy is uppermost in Morrison’s mind – he has always bracketed “livelihoods” (aka the economy) with “lives” in his language.

We’re not going to jump from where we are now to that “other side” he and others talk about. We will walk on a long perilous journey requiring complex decisions about steps and timing, with the risk of serious mistakes, and the certainty of pain.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy says: “We are on a life raft. We now have to chart the course of where we take that life raft.” The national cabinet has asked its health experts for navigational advice. But the issue always comes back to the health-economics balance.

The much-anticipated modelling the government has released didn’t provide much of a compass. It told us the obvious: if we’d let the epidemic rip – which we were never going to – the health system would have been overwhelmed.

The present policy is one of “suppressing” the virus – isolating cases, tracking contacts.

Morrison believes it would be too costly to aim to eliminate COVID-19 here – the New Zealand route.

Read more: New Zealand outstrips Australia, UK and US with $12 billion coronavirus package for business and people in isolation

So the future choice is between attempted continued containment until there is a vaccine – a big operation in testing and tracing – or pursuing some form of “herd immunity”. The latter would allow the virus to move through the community (while protecting the most vulnerable).

The herd immunity path (there’d be a nicer name) would be very controversial and take more lives than attempting to maintain the suppression approach.

Asked on Thursday whether it was possible, when we do unwind the various restrictions, to simultaneously pursue a suppression policy, deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth said:“It’s entirely possible, and that would need to be the aim….The suppression strategy needs to be sustainable in the medium term whilst we work out things like when a vaccine becomes available, whilst we bring new molecules online to be able to treat the virus.”

What is important as discussion gets underway about lifting some restrictions is that we get transparency on the health advice. This is being promised, but it’s no good having modelling long after decisions are made.

There has been more than a dash of “we know best” in how the government has explained things so far. “We’re acting on medical advice”, it has said, to justify this or that measure. But the official health advice has sometimes appeared less than consistent, and been criticised by some experts.

Morrison has canvassed easing restrictions on a patchwork basis, first in places where and when it seems safest to do so. Those places would in effect be trials for elsewhere.

This is logical but won’t be easy. If combined with the continuation of the suppression policy, governments must be willing to reimpose controls if case numbers increase again.

And strict health protocols should be in place for how businesses and organisations deal with fresh cases.

A present challenge is to manage the pressures from stakeholders and the community for an easing timetable. Innes Willox, chief of the Australian Industry Group, wrote this week in the Australian: “we need a path back to getting the economy going again. … Businesses owners and their backers will quickly change direction, make other arrangements or move on if they don’t have some hope or sense that the current restrictions aren’t limitless.”

After an initial period when anyone who criticised the government was likely to be attacked for betraying “Team Australia”, a degree of political normality is returning, at a muted level. Anthony Albanese has become more outspoken, and this week the Senate set up a Labor-chaired committee to examine the government’s response to the pandemic.

On the current timetable, the parliament is not due to meet again until August. The parliamentary hiatus is one restriction which is unnecessary and undesirable.

Morrison says all who have jobs are essential workers. Federal parliamentarians have jobs and part of their remit is to hold regular collective deliberations in Canberra. It’s time they got back to doing so, with provisions for appropriate distancing. One-day dashes are not enough.

– ref. Australia’s coronavirus debate turns to the way out – https://theconversation.com/australias-coronavirus-debate-turns-to-the-way-out-136058

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Michelle Grattan talks with MPs Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Victoria), Fiona Martin (Reid, NSW), Clare O’Neil (Hotham, Victoria) and Helen Haines (Indi, Victoria) about how they do their job during the pandemic.

They discuss the operation of their electorate offices in light of isolation requirements, and recount how the crisis is affecting their constituents.

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Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: MPs Tim Watts, Fiona Martin, Clare O’Neil and Helen Haines talk about serving their electorates during the coronavirus crisis – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-mps-tim-watts-fiona-martin-clare-oneil-and-helen-haines-talk-about-serving-their-electorates-during-the-coronavirus-crisis-136060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Geard, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne; Senior Research Fellow, Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of Melbourne

Following the emergence and rapid spread of COVID-19, several countries have succeeded in bringing local outbreaks under control. The most dramatic of these is China, where large scale restrictions on people’s movement appear to have halted domestic transmission.

South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan also had early success containing local outbreaks, using a combination of extensive contact tracing, testing, border measures and differing degrees of social distancing.

However, COVID-19 is now widespread across the globe, and these countries remain at risk of a second wave of infections, sparked either by overseas arrivals or undetected pockets of infection.

As China has begun to lift travel restrictions, the world is watching to see whether they can avoid a second wave of outbreaks.

Read more: Why defeating coronavirus in one country isn’t enough – there needs to be a coordinated global strategy

What causes a second wave of a disease outbreak?

Infectious diseases spread via contact between infectious and susceptible people. In the absence of any control measures, an outbreak will grow as long as the average number of people infected by each infectious person is greater than one.

If people who recover generate a protective immune response, the outbreak will leave a growing trail of immune people. Once enough people are immune, there are fewer susceptible people to become infected and the outbreak will die away.

When an outbreak is brought under control by social distancing and other measures, it’s possible only a small proportion of the population will have been infected and gained immunity.

If a population has not achieved herd immunity, enough susceptible people may remain to fuel a second wave if controls are relaxed and infection is reintroduced.

Will we see a second wave in China?

Despite the scale of the outbreak in Hubei and other Chinese provinces, it’s likely most residents remain susceptible to infection.

Even for those people previously infected, immunity to COVID-19 is an open question. Reinfection appears uncommon, and a study in rhesus macaques suggests a protective immune response does occur. But we need more data to understand if this is common in humans, and how long immunity might last.

Read more: Yes, we’re flattening the coronavirus curve but modelling needs to inform how we start easing restrictions

The strong social distancing measures used to control COVID-19 in China have a human cost, and cannot be maintained indefinitely.

As China winds back social distancing measures, new infected cases could, if not quickly detected and isolated, trigger a second wave of COVID-19.

A recent modelling study indicated a second peak of infection might arrive in Wuhan by mid-year if interventions were lifted too quickly.

During the 1918 influenza pandemic, it was the second wave that was the largest and most deadly. But that probably won’t happen today. As we learn more about COVID-19, we become better placed to control its transmission.

If a rapid increase in transmission is detected in China, it’s likely authorities would quickly reintroduce the restrictions that successfully contained the first wave.

Preventing a second wave of COVID-19

When the first wave of an outbreak is sufficiently large, then enough of the population could become immune that there are too few susceptible people remaining to fuel a second wave. But the potential human cost of an uncontrolled outbreak is immense and unacceptable.

Alternatively, a globally coordinated response that eradicated the virus could prevent a second wave, as was achieved for SARS in 2003. However, the milder nature of many infections, and the broad global spread of COVID-19 make it a much greater challenge to eradicate.

Another end point is the rapid development of a vaccine that could help achieve herd immunity without extensive infection.

In any event, after the first wave has passed, preventing a second wave will require ongoing surveillance and testing to detect and isolate any new cases as control measures are unwound.

Read more: The ‘herd immunity’ route to fighting coronavirus is unethical and potentially dangerous

Could we face a second wave in Australia?

We use mathematical models to explore the dynamic behaviour of infectious diseases. They can help explore how factors such as the strength and timing of control efforts might affect the likelihood and timing of a second wave.

However, models provide a simplified view of reality. One of the complexities they often (but not always) omit is human behaviour and how it might change in response to government and media communication, social and economic realities, and direct experience of COVID-19.

Australia’s current efforts are focused on “flattening the curve” of the first wave of COVID-19.

Border measures have greatly reduced the arrival of imported cases, and the coming weeks will reveal the extent to which social distancing measures have succeeded in slowing community transmission. The decline in numbers of new cases reported over recent days is promising.

But this is only the beginning. If social distancing measures are to be relaxed, ongoing vigilance will be needed to prevent a second wave.

And even if we avoid a second wave, the path to long-term control is not straightforward.

We’ll need a broad variety of expertise, including modelling, to help Australia navigate beyond the first wave of COVID-19.

Read more: Now we’re in lockdown, how can we get out? 4 scenarios to prevent a second wave

– ref. Coronavirus: what causes a ‘second wave’ of disease outbreak, and could we see this in Australia? – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-what-causes-a-second-wave-of-disease-outbreak-and-could-we-see-this-in-australia-134125

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elyse Methven, Lecturer in Law, University of Technology Sydney

The message to everyone during the coronavirus pandemic is to stay at home and only leave if you really need to for, say, food, health care or exercise.

Police now have powers to issue on-the-spot fines to people for breaches of public health orders as part of the coronavirus restrictions.

Hundreds of fines have already been issued in many states, for example:

• Victoria: police fined three friends who did not live together for playing video games in the same lounge room

• Queensland: police fined five young people having a party in a hotel room

• New South Wales: police fined a man eating a kebab on a bench.

Victorian police also pulled over and fined a 17-year-old learner driver for “non-essential travel”, but later withdrew the fine.

Read more: Pandemic policing needs to be done with the public’s trust, not confusion

This last case shows penalty notices can be overturned. So, what should you do if you have been issued with a notice by police, especially if you think you have been unfairly fined?

Know your rights

Penalty notice schemes allow police to swiftly impose a fixed fine and avoid prosecuting the matter in court. Police and politicians tend to describe their benefit as reducing red tape and cutting costs.

But many Australians are unaware of their rights and options if they receive a penalty notice.

The following information is not intended to replace independent legal advice. You should also check your state or territory’s rules and procedures.

Q: What happens if I receive a COVID-19 penalty notice?

Check the notice for the payment due date. If you are experiencing financial hardship and cannot pay the fine, contact the fines administration agency to see if you can request an extension or ask to pay by instalments.

Q: What should I do if I think the fine has been unfairly issued?

The directions of some COVID-19 orders are vague and have been hastily drafted. Many Australians are struggling to keep up with what’s allowed and what isn’t.

Police have also had insufficient time and training to understand the orders, including what constitutes a reasonable excuse. This can give rise to arbitrary – and perhaps incorrect – interpretations of the provisions.

You can request an independent review of the police officer’s decision to issue a penalty notice. The request should be directed to the relevant fines administration agency before the penalty due date.

If successful, your penalty notice may be withdrawn or you could receive a caution in place of the fine.

Grounds for a review may include:

• an error was made in the decision to issue the penalty notice (for example, you had a reasonable excuse for leaving your residence, even if your excuse was not one specified in the order)

• extenuating circumstances contributed to the alleged offence (such as homelessness, a mental illness, a cognitive impairment or a disability).

Review processes often allow you to provide copies of evidence to support your claim, such as photos and documents.

Q: Can I elect to have the matter heard in court?

If you disagree with the findings of the independent reviewer you can elect to go to court.

A court may find you guilty or not guilty.

If convicted of the offence, you may be liable for a larger fine and imprisonment for up to six months. You should seek legal advice if you intend to go to court.

The right to seek an independent review or go to court is rarely exercised. As the NSW Law Reform Commission observed in 2012:

The penalty notice system does not have the transparency normally associated with justice systems in democratic societies … Most people simply pay the penalty. Only 1% elect to go to court, so that the guilt or innocence of the recipient is rarely scrutinised.

Q: What happens if I don’t pay my fine on time?

If you don’t pay the fine by the due date, you will usually be given a reminder notice and may incur additional financial penalties.

If you still do not pay the fine by the extended due date, you may receive fines enforcement sanctions, including driver licence or vehicle registration suspension or cancellation, or property seizure.

Problems with penalty notices

In the rush to quickly enforce social distancing and social isolation rules, the flaws of on-the-spot fines regimes have received little attention.

They do not punish everyone equally. A wealthy person is much less likely to feel the weight of a $1,000 fine – and suffer the consequences of fines enforcement sanctions – than someone who is unemployed or has had their income drastically reduced.

Read more: Courts are moving to video during coronavirus, but research shows it’s hard to get a fair trial remotely

There is also insufficient evidence of the deterrent effect of penalty notices, particularly on those who do not understand the law or what they did wrong, those who are too poor to pay the fine or, alternatively, those who are so wealthy that the fine has a negligible impact.

An important aspect of the rule of law is that citizens are made aware of the law so they can moderate their behaviour to comply with it.

The speed at which the COVID-19 orders have been introduced, their breadth and their arbitrary interpretation by individual police officers can result in people unwittingly breaching the law and being unfairly punished.

For further information, contact your state or territory fines administration agency:

Australian Capital Territory: Police are not yet issuing COVID-19 infringement notices as they are prioritising public education over coercive sanctions.

New South Wales: Revenue NSW

Northern Territory: Fines Recovery Unit

Queensland: Infringement Notices

South Australia: SA Police Expiations

Tasmania: Monetary Penalties Enforcement Service

Victoria: Fines Victoria

Western Australia: Fines Enforcement Registry

– ref. What to do if you’ve been fined for breaching coronavirus restrictions – https://theconversation.com/what-to-do-if-youve-been-fined-for-breaching-coronavirus-restrictions-135701

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Bloomfield, Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine, University of Notre Dame Australia

Lockdown measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 should actually help cut the cases of flu this year. That’s because keeping people apart to reduce the spread of coronavirus will also help reduce the spread of flu.

That said, you really should receive a flu vaccine anyway.

In fact, getting your flu vaccination as soon as you can is a great way to help ease the strain on our health system, which is already expected to struggle to cope with the coronavirus outbreak.

Read more: The ‘dreaded duo’: Australia will likely hit a peak in coronavirus cases around flu season

Flu cases skyrocketed last year

There were 313,079 cases of influenza reported in Australia in 2019, up from 58,862 in 2018. That’s much higher than average over the past 20 years.

Many states and territories saw a large and very early uptick in the number of influenza cases last year.

The most common influenza strain circulating at the time was influenza A/H3N2. It was reported that some circulating A/H3N2 viruses were “less well matched” to those in the vaccine, which could account at least in part for the higher number of cases in 2019.

The high, early and prolonged season was unusual. Some suggested different international travel patterns may have also contributed, but the truth is it’s not entirely clear the 2019 flu season was so unusual.

The WHO has recommended changes to three of the four strains in the vaccine most of us will be offered this year. There’s no guarantee of a good match, of course, but we’re certainly hoping for one.

With COVID-19 already likely to put our health-care systems under immense pressure, we cannot afford to burden the system with extra influenza cases requiring hospitalisation.

Social distancing: it works for coronavirus and for flu

Influenza and COVID-19 share some similar symptoms. They are also both spread via respiratory droplets: coughing, sneezing and touching.

Protecting ourselves from COVID-19 through good hygiene and social distancing also means protecting ourselves from flu. This is a small silver lining in an otherwise extremely disruptive time.

We will almost certainly see the impact of social distancing with a reduction in a range of infectious diseases in Australia, from influenza through to sexually transmitted infections and food-borne disease.

In fact, the coronavirus pandemic is as a good reminder of how lucky we are to live in an era where vaccines for many diseases are available. The unprecedented coronavirus measures highlight the lengths we need to go to in order to reduce risk when there’s no vaccine or natural immunity.

Doing your bit to ease the strain on our health system

If we had a roll of toilet paper for every time we’ve heard the term “flattening the curve” in the last few weeks, we’d probably be a lot happier. There are, notably, no mentions of “eliminating the curve”.

Flattening doesn’t mean people will not get COVID-19. These measures are not designed to get case numbers down to zero.

In fact, until a vaccine is available, “flattening the curve” means the same number of people still get infected, but at a slower rate, so our health services can cope and we have as few deaths as possible.

If easing the burden on the health services is important to you, you can do your bit not just by following the coronavirus social distancing measures and washing hands frequently, but also getting your flu shot.

Read more: Why the flu shot cannot give you the flu (and why you should get one now)

The 2020 flu vaccine is now starting to become available for those aged over six months, and people should speak to their health-care provider about booking to get one sooner rather than later.

– ref. The coronavirus lockdown might help limit this year’s flu season – but you should still get your flu jab anyway – https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-lockdown-might-help-limit-this-years-flu-season-but-you-should-still-get-your-flu-jab-anyway-135045

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgie Russell, Senior Lecturer, Deakin University

This Easter will be especially challenging, with family isolation and many parents under financial strain, or other stressors.

So, many parents will be looking to restore some sense of “normality” by welcoming the Easter bunny into their home.

But when it comes to Easter eggs, is it better for parents to ration them or let kids eat as many as they like? Or is this year’s Easter so unusual it doesn’t really matter?

Read more: Coronavirus: tiny moments of pleasure really can help us through this stressful time

Chocolate Easter eggs are high in both fat and sugar. For these reasons children, like most of us, typically find them delicious and hard to resist.

But how many Easter eggs we eat is not just about whether we like them. When we eat them, we activate the reward centres in the brain whether or not we even notice how delicious the eggs are, making us want more, sometimes undermining our good intentions.

Some children eat until they are sick

Many parents notice children have different approaches to managing their Easter egg stash.

Some children save their eggs and eat them in an orderly fashion, treasuring one every so often. Others eat them in one go, until they feel sick. Others might try and save their eggs, but struggle to resist the temptation.

The difference is likely related to their temperament. Children with a more impulsive temperament find it more challenging to resist the inner urge, or impulse, to reach for the next Easter egg.

Read more: Fact or fiction – is sugar addictive?

In contrast, children with different temperaments can resist immediate temptation and delay their gratification. In other words, they can forgo something now for something better in the future.

These children would probably do well on the famous marshmallow task developed in the 1970s. This is where children are given a choice of eating one marshmallow immediately or receiving more later.

Children better at delaying gratification are also less likely to have obesity later in life.

Children’s responses may change over time

Children’s abilities to delay eating Easter eggs (and other sugary or highly processed foods) aren’t fixed. They can get better at managing their haul.

As children get older and their brains develop, they get better at self-control, including their ability to control their emotions and reactions to tasty food and treats.

And parents can help kids develop better self-control and to manage situations where there are lots of tasty foods around.

How can parents help?

If your child is eating all their eggs in one go, or trying to save up the eggs, but struggling to do so, parents can:

• help children to think about the pleasure of eating them in the future,
• encourage children to set a goal about making them last longer,
• introduce some rules about when and how their children can eat Easter eggs (for instance, only during afternoon tea)
• suggest children remove them from sight, or easy access, by putting them in a container with a lid.

These strategies either help young children find ways to resist the impulse to eat the eggs, or lessen the urge to eat them by removing constant temptation and reminders they are there.

How about parents rationing the eggs?

Parents concerned about their child eating too many Easter eggs may hide them in a cupboard, ration them, or only give out an egg as a reward if the child behaves well.

But restricting access to available foods can increase how much children want to eat those types of food, now and in the future.

And using food as a reward might teach children food is a good way of rewarding yourself when upset or when happy, something called emotional eating, which is linked to over-eating.

Read more: Should we use food as a reward for kids? We asked five experts

Haven’t parents got enough on their plates this Easter?

Parents shouldn’t worry too much about how they manage the Easter egg stash and its impact on their child’s long-term eating behaviour. Especially because these are difficult times and we’re all doing the best we can to get by.

But what’s more likely to have an impact on how children think about food and eating are the habitual strategies parents use.

Using food to help children calm down when they are upset, as a reward or punishment, or restricting access to a food that is in the home, can contribute to unhealthy relationships with food such as emotional eating or eating for other reasons not related to hunger.

Read more: Tips to reduce your waste this Easter (but don’t worry, you can still eat chocolate)

However, food is not only about nutrition. It’s also a social experience. Easter and Easter eggs provide an opportunity for a fun and positive time for parent-child relationships. Parents and children can enjoy the adventure of finding eggs and then the pleasure of eating them.

This year, that pleasure could be even greater. If at the same time children learn something about eating, that’s a bonus.

– ref. Easter eggs can bring a little ‘normality’ to kids in isolation. But should we ration them or let kids eat how many they like? – https://theconversation.com/easter-eggs-can-bring-a-little-normality-to-kids-in-isolation-but-should-we-ration-them-or-let-kids-eat-how-many-they-like-133077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael L. Brown, Director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences and Lecturer at the School of Philosophy, Australian National University

As they released the modelling of the COVID-19 pandemic behind Australia’s social isolation policies this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy were guarded.

They emphasised the limits of scientific models, and how they could easily be misinterpreted.

This is not surprising. Many people don’t have a clear understanding of what scientific models are, and what we can and can’t expect from them.

Scientific models can be powerful tools for understanding complex phenomena such as pandemics, but they can’t tell us everything.

Read more: Yes, we’re flattening the coronavirus curve but modelling needs to inform how we start easing restrictions

What is a scientific model?

Scientific models are representations of parts of the real world. They range from small-scale physical models of real systems, such as the famous San Francisco Bay Model – a miniature version of the bay used to investigate water flow – to the type of mathematical models used to understand the spread of COVID-19.

Models can be used to indirectly explore the nature of the real world. They can help us understand which features of real-world systems are important, how those features interact, how they are likely to change in the future, and how we can alter those systems to achieve some goal.

Why are models so valuable?

Scientific models let us explore features of the real world that we can’t investigate directly. In the case of COVID-19, we can’t do direct experiments on what proportion of Australia’s population needs to engage in social distancing to “flatten the curve”. Even if we could devise good experiments, it takes days or weeks for people to become sick and transmit COVID-19, so any experimental results would arrive too late to be useful.

Models are invaluable in situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, where time is of the essence and we are interested in effects on a large scale.

What are the limits of scientific models?

A model’s usefulness depends on how accurately it represents the real world. To make an accurate model, you need good data.

That’s one reason why models of the spread of COVID-19 that use data from densely populated parts of Europe are unlikely to offer valuable insights into the situation in suburban Sydney. Data from one situation may not apply to the other.

This is a major challenge for the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in Australia. The lack of extensive local data has left our policymakers relying on models based on a combination of overseas data, general theory and pre-existing modelling of influenza pandemics.

Because of this, the models are not designed to be used for making predictions about what will happen.

Read more: Modelling suggests going early and going hard will save lives and help the economy

For example, Imperial College London is producing relatively detailed modelling that can be used to make accurate predictions about specific cases in the United States and the United Kingdom. But such models require detailed data.

The Australian modelling generated by the Doherty Institute to look at the impacts of interventions on the spread of COVID-19 is simpler and more general. These models offer valuable large-scale insights, but far less local precision.

Such general models have been particularly useful early in the pandemic, when localised information is scarce. As we build a more detailed picture of Australian circumstances, modelling will become more specific and more accurate, and these general models will be less important.

One challenge for modelling in a real-world context like COVID-19 is that our models may not get it right every time. This is partly because we lack enough fine-grained information about the real-world situation.

It is also because individual actions and sheer bad luck in the short term can make big differences in the longer term. A single individual who fails to isolate or quarantine themselves can produce a very large ripple of downstream effects. We have seen this in the case of South Korea’s Patient 31, who triggered an enormous cluster of infections in her church.

What does this all mean?

Despite the uncertainty inherent in the COVID-19 pandemic, we should be optimistic about the science. The general principles behind the models we are basing our public policy on are the product of decades of testing and research, and we are learning more and more specific information about COVID-19 every day.

Thanks in large part to the power of model-based science, we are in a far better place than any generation before us to deal successfully and efficiently with a pandemic of this scale.

– ref. Scientific modelling is steering our response to coronavirus. But what is scientific modelling? – https://theconversation.com/scientific-modelling-is-steering-our-response-to-coronavirus-but-what-is-scientific-modelling-135938

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Tognolini, Director, Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment, University of Sydney

Following a meeting with states and territories, federal education minister, Dan Tehan said year 12 students were a priority, and were being sent a clear signal: “There will be no year 13. There will be no mass repeating”.

He also said students seeking an ATAR for 2020 would be able to use it to apply for entry to university in the normal way.

The intention to retain current practices in these difficult times is encouraging. It should be a source of comfort for year 12 students facing a disruptive preparation for their end of year assessments.

Business as usual

It must be remembered the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) is just a percentile-rank of student performance based on their aggregate of assessments across designated subjects they sit for in the final year (or two) of schooling.

Read more: What actually is an ATAR? First of all it’s a rank, not a score

It is calculated in each jurisdiction that issues a year 12 credential and there is no requirement these aggregate assessments be the same. In fact, not all jurisdictions use external subject exams. Most combine these exams with moderated school-based assessments, and others such as the ACT, don’t have external subject exams at all.

So, when the minister said each jurisdiction will decide the end-of-year assessment process in their jurisdiction and that “we all are going to endeavour […] to make sure that this year’s ATAR scores are the same as last year’s ATAR scores”, he is saying it’s business as usual.

The difference will occur at each jurisdiction level where the appropriate authorities will be working to consider a number of scenarios to ensure the evidence (assessments) used to construct the ATAR for their jurisdiction is as valid (fair) and reliable (consistent) as possible for their students.

The best scenario would be that the COVID-19 crisis dissipates in time for jurisdictions to apply their normal assessment procedures. But this may not be possible in some instances, such as where students have to complete a body of work and can no longer use school facilities.

So a number of other scenarios would be considered as the conditions change.

Teacher estimates

If it’s not possible to have traditional assessments such as exams at all, one option used in the past for a number of purposes is to have teachers provide an “estimate or prediction”. This is what they believe the student would get on the exam or assessment based on their knowledge of the assessment and all the evidence they have from the students’ work up to, and including, the last day of school in 2020.

This is not as extreme as it may appear. There is significant evidence to suggest teacher estimates are as reliable and stable as traditional examination results.

A report investigating the accuracy of predicted grades for the Universities and Colleges Admissions Centre (UCAS) in the UK found just under 90% of grades were accurately predicted to within one grade.

Teachers have the data from past exams and assessments and can reliably predict how their student would do.

Read more: COVID-19 has thrown year 12 students’ lives into chaos. So what can we do?

Some people could worry teachers may have biases towards some students that would lend them to give some students a higher or lower mark than they would otherwise get. But teachers don’t make these marks up. They do so based on evidence of what the student has already achieved and this informs their estimate.

Another recent study based on a sample of 10,000 students in the UK, showed teacher assessments during compulsory education are as reliable and stable as standardised exam scores.

In a later Conversation article, the authors of the study said

We can – and should – trust teacher assessments as indicators of pupils’ achievement.

One of the most compelling arguments regarding the reliability of teacher estimates is that external examinations are validated against the teacher estimates. If the results from examinations gave totally different results from what the teachers expect, there would be a significant public outcry against the validity of examinations.

Read more: Don’t worry about cancelled exams – research shows we should switch to teacher assessment permanently

Another concern about relying on teachers is that they may inflate grades due to pressure from parents or students.

In Australia, most examination authorities either currently collect teacher estimates or have done in the past to provide evidence to support decisions for anomalous cases and situations – just like we are experiencing now. So jurisdictions would monitor the teacher estimates to make sure they are consistent with historical data.

Any anomalies due to grade inflation would then be picked up.

Just do your best

Ideally, traditional exams can be carried out in the way students know and expect.

But students and the education community in general should take comfort in knowing if this is not possible, there are other ways to produce reliable scores that can be used for ATARs in 2020.

The best way for students to maximise ATAR scores is to focus their energies on maximising their performance in each of the subjects they are currently taking. They can rely on the jurisdictions to make sure student performance is based on the best evidence available.

– ref. Teachers could be called on to estimate year 12 student grades – this is fairer than it sounds – https://theconversation.com/teachers-could-be-called-on-to-estimate-year-12-student-grades-this-is-fairer-than-it-sounds-136039

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

The coronavirus pandemic has caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world and pushed major economies into a tailspin. Beyond those impacts, almost all of us will face psychological challenges – trying to maintain a responsible social distancing regimen without sliding into psychological isolation and loneliness.

At least we’re all in the same boat, and misery loves company, right?

Actually, we’re not all in the same boat. Generalisations about how the COVID-19 lockdown will affect us overlook the fact people have different personalities. We’re all going to respond in different ways to our changing situation.

Extraverts and introverts

Take Bob, for example. After two days working from home Bob couldn’t wait to try a social drinking session over Zoom. But drinking a beer in front of his laptop just wasn’t the same. He’s wondering how he’ll cope in the coming weeks and months, cooped up inside and away from his friends.

He wonders this on a call to his sister, Jan: “I might not get coronavirus but I’m going to get cabin fever!”

Jan doesn’t understand Bob’s agitation or why he’s so worried about staying at home. If Jan is feeling bad about anything, it is the guilt of realising she might actually be enjoying the apocalypse-quiet evenings to herself, far from the madding crowd. Bliss!

Jan and Bob are archetypes of people we all know well. Bob represents the classic extravert. He’s talkative, gregarious and highly social. Jan is an introvert. She enjoys solitude and finds rowdy Bob a bit too much.

Different people, different responses

Differences in extraversion-introversion emerge in early life and are relatively stable over the lifespan. They influence which environments we seek out and how we respond to those environments.

In a recent study, extraverts and introverts were asked to spend a week engaging in higher levels of extravert-typical behaviour (being talkative, sociable, etc). Extraverts reaped several benefits including enhanced mood and feelings of authenticity. Conversely, introverts experienced no benefits, and reported feeling tired and irritable.

The social distancing rules to which we’re all trying to adhere are like a mirror image of this intervention. Now it’s the extraverts who are acting out of character, and who will likely experience decreased well-being in the coming weeks and months. Introverts, on the other hand, have been training for this moment their whole lives.

Why might introverts find isolation easier to deal with than extraverts? Most obviously, they tend to be less motivated to seek out social engagment. Introverts also tend to feel less need to experience pleasure and excitement. This may make them less prone to the boredom that will afflict many of us as social distancing drags on.

Looking deeper

Other aspects of our personalities may also shape our coping during isolation. Consider the remaining four traits in the Big Five personality model:

People high in conscientiousness, who are more organised, less distractable and also more adaptable, will find it easier to set up and stick to a structured daily schedule, as many experts recommend.

People high in agreeableness, who tend to be polite, compassionate and cooperative, will be better equipped to negotiate life in the pockets of family members or housemates.

People high in openness to experience, who tend to be curious and imaginative, will likely become absorbed in books, music and creative solutions to the humdrum of lockdown.

In contrast, people high in neuroticism, who are more susceptible to stress and negative emotions than their more stable peers, will be most at risk for anxiety and depression during these challenging times.

Of course, these are all generalisations. Introverts are not immune to loneliness, and those with more vulnerable personalities can thrive with the right resources and social support.

Life in a capsule

For some, living under lockdown might feel like working on a space station or Antarctic research facility. What lessons can we draw from personality research in these extreme environments?

That research shows people who are emotionally stable, self-reliant and autonomous, goal-oriented, friendly, patient and open tend to cope better in conditions of extreme isolation. In particular, it has been observed that “‘sociable [read agreeable] introverts’ – who enjoy, but do not need, social interaction – seem optimally suited for capsule living”.

To manage as best we can in our earthbound and non-polar “capsules”, we might aspire to some of the qualities noted above: to be calm and organised, determined but patient, self-reliant but connected.

Lonelineness versus time alone

The coronavirus pandemic has arrived on the heels of what some describe as a “loneliness epidemic”, but these headlines may be overblown. Again, part of what is missing in such descriptions is the fact that clouds for some are silver linings for others.

A counterpoint to the so-called loneliness epidemic is the study of “aloneliness”, the negative emotions many experience as a result of insufficient time spent alone. As Anthony Storr wrote in Solitude: A return to the self, “solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support”, and the capacity to be alone is as much a form of emotional maturity as the capacity to form close attachments.

Of course, some people in lockdown are facing formidable challenges that have nothing to do with their personality. Many have lost their jobs and face economic hardship. Some are completely isolated whereas others share their homes with loved ones. Even so, our response to these challenges reflects not only our predicament, but also ourselves.

– ref. Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone – https://theconversation.com/personalities-that-thrive-in-isolation-and-what-we-can-all-learn-from-time-alone-135307

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Woolaston, Lawyer, Queensland University of Technology

Never before have we seen how the human use of wildlife can yield such catastrophe, as we have with COVID-19.

The current available evidence indicates COVID-19 was first transmitted in a wildlife market in Wuhan. The disease likely originated in pangolins, bats, or a combination of both and was then transmitted to humans.

While various commentators have blamed pangolins, bats, or even our lack of “mastery” of wildlife, the real cause of this pandemic goes deeper – into the laws, cultures and institutions of most countries.

Read more: Coronavirus is a wake-up call: our war with the environment is leading to pandemics

At the root of the problem is a social phenomenon called “human-wildlife conflict”. This is when the interests of humans and the needs of wildlife overlap in a negative way.

Both the illegal wildlife trade and zoonotic diseases (that is, diseases transmitted from animals to humans) are aspects of human-wildlife conflict.

This ubiquitous phenomenon is poorly addressed in both international and domestic laws. And this grave omission has led to disastrous effects on humanity, as COVID-19 has shown.

A complex international issue

Disease outbreaks stemming from human-wildlife conflict are not new or limited to the Chinese wildlife trade. Ebola, for example, originated in the Western African country of Gabon. It was likely spread from a chimpanzee that was hunted and eaten by local people.

Sometimes the disease itself creates the conflict. Hendra, a zoonotic disease confined to Australia, was passed from fruit bats to horses and then to humans. The outbreak prompted calls for fruit bats to be culled.

Research shows environmental destruction is also leading to an increase in zoonotic diseases. For example, clearing forests and destroying habitats can force animals to move closer to urban areas, bringing diseases with them.

Read more: Ebola one year on: the wins, the setbacks, and the way forward

COVID-19 and Ebola can also be connected to poverty, as wildlife hunting is often connected to a basic need for food. Culture, politics, health, issues of gender equality and economics (to name a few), are all connected to human-wildlife conflicts as well.

The widespread impact of these types of viruses that can spread across international borders means that they should be governed as an international issue.

But there are no consistent international or domestic laws to guide governance of the multiple and interacting causes of pandemics.

Laws don’t go far enough

The human-wildlife relationship goes beyond issues of conservation and animal welfare, yet many of the world’s laws designed to tackle these multidimensional problems do not.

A select few laws have sought to implement a whole-systems approach to legal decision-making. For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international treaty, requires ecosystem managers to consider the impact of environmental decision-making on multiple parts of society, including levels of poverty and economics.

Read more: From the bushfires to coronavirus, our old ‘normal’ is gone forever. So what’s next?

But this holistic approach isn’t reflected in domestic laws around the world that are supposed to enforce international treaties, such as Australia’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which is currently under review by the federal government.

Collaborations, such as between health law and conservation law, must be put in place. For example, while the World Health Organisation works on zoonose (animal-borne disease) prevention, there is little interaction between it and the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species.

No quick fix

Our legal systems – especially in the West and in international law – encourage separation and domination of the environment.

For example, the laws that designate protected areas explicitly separate people from wildlife, and this can drastically change the relationship between them. Laws also continue to encourage domination via implicit means, such as through legalised wildlife hunting and trade.

Various changes to law have been proposed in light of COVID-19, including closing all wildlife markets and trade.

But these types of fixes don’t address the many ways our health can be affected by wildlife use. Nor do they consider the poverty that often drives the consumption of wildlife, such as in Gabon and the other multiple causal factors.

Read more: A major scorecard gives the health of Australia’s environment less than 1 out of 10

Such blanket legal prohibitions are neither appropriate nor adequate. We need legal changes on a larger scale. Laws must acknowledge how all humans are vulnerable to wildlife and broader environment change. If they haven’t even acknowledged this, then they can’t start to address it.

What needs to change?

Changes to the law at both the international and domestic level should focus on two primary areas.

First, increased cooperation is required between systems and areas of law in addressing the source of our vulnerability, instead of waiting for the vulnerability to become catastrophic, such as with COVID-19.

Second, both international and domestic laws must recognise the interdependency between humans and all aspects of the natural environment, in every area of law – from environmental law, to trade law, human rights and corporate law.

Ecuador, for example, integrated this idea into its national constitution so the necessity of environmental protection is linked to the continued existence of its people.

Read more: 222 scientists say cascading crises are the biggest threat to the well-being of future generations

Another way is to integrate nature into the objectives of each piece of law. This includes all international treaties and domestic pieces of legislation, even those that do not expressly deal with matters of the environment, such as health law, where a healthy environment is directly linked to human health.

No, this is not a small undertaking. But as the catastrophe of COVID-19 has demonstrated, the problems we face if we don’t change are far more onerous in all aspects of our lives.

– ref. Most laws ignore ‘human-wildlife conflict’. This makes us vulnerable to pandemics – https://theconversation.com/most-laws-ignore-human-wildlife-conflict-this-makes-us-vulnerable-to-pandemics-135191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Milne, Senior Lecturer, Resources, Environment and Development, Australian National University

The world faces profound disruption. For Australians who lived through the most horrific fire season on record, there has been no time to recover. The next crisis is now upon us in the form of COVID-19. As we grapple with uncertainty and upheaval, it’s clear that our old “normal” will never be recovered.

Radical changes like these can be interpreted through the lens of “rupture”. As the social scientist Christian Lund describes, ruptures are “open moments, when opportunities and risks multiply… when new structural scaffolding is erected”.

The concept of rupture therefore explains what happens during periods of profound change – such as colonisation or environmental catastrophe – when relationships between people, governments and the environment get reconfigured.

This can help us to make sense of the bushfire crisis and COVID-19: we are in an open moment, when the status quo is in flux.

History of rupture

Colonisation is perhaps the most dramatic example of rupture in human history. Original ways of life are violently overthrown, while new systems of authority, property and control are imposed.

Novelist Chinua Achebe famously described the effects of colonisation on tribal people in Nigeria, with his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart. But rupture tells us that things do not just fall apart – they also get remade.

We have researched rupture in Southeast Asia, where hydro-electric dam projects have devastated river systems and local livelihoods. New kinds of political power and powerlessness have emerged in affected communities, who’ve had to adjust to flooding, resettlement and an influx of new settlers.

Read more: The community-led movement creating hope in the time of coronavirus

We’ve also found new relationships between people and nature in these contexts. For example, as indigenous people have been displaced from their ancestral lands, they must reestablish access to natural resources and forest-based traditions in new places.

Importantly, the rupture metaphor can be scaled up to help us understand national and global crises. Three insights emerge.

1. Rupture doesn’t come out of nowhere

Both the bushfires and COVID-19 expose how underlying conditions – such as drought, social inequality, and the erosion of public goods and services – contribute to a dramatic event occurring, and in turn shape how it unfolds.

Before the fires hit in late 2019, the drought had already brought many rural communities to their knees. The combination of dry dams, farmers without income, and towns without water meant local capacity to cope was already diminished.

Similarly with COVID-19, pre-existing poverty has translated into higher infection rates, as seen in Spain where vulnerable people in poorly paid jobs have suffered most from the virus.

From this, it is clear that crises are not stand-alone events – and society’s response must address pre-existing problems.

Read more: Here’s what the coronavirus pandemic can teach us about tackling climate change

Conversely, favourable underlying conditions – such as social cohesion, public trust and safety nets – can help us adapt and improvise in the face of rupture.

For example during the last bushfire season, a small and nimble community-based firefighting team formed at Mongarlowe in southern New South Wales. The group extinguished spot fires that the under-resourced Rural Fire Service (RFS) could not reach – saving forests, property and potentially, lives.

Such groups emerged from already strong communities. Social cohesion and community responsiveness is also helping societies cope with COVID-19, as seen in the emergence of community-led “mutual aid” groups around the world.

2. Rupture changes the dynamics of government

Rupture can also expose frictions between citizens and their governments. For example, the Australian government’s initial response to the bushfire crisis was condemned as insensitive and ineffectual. As the crisis evolved, this damaged the government’s credibility and authority – especially in relation to its stance on climate change.

Against this foil, state governments delivered somewhat clearer messaging and steadier management. But tensions soon arose between state and federal leadership, revealing cracks in the system.

The COVID-19 pandemic means that more than ever, we need competent and coherent governance. But fractures have again emerged between state and federal governments, as some states moved ahead of the Commonwealth with faster, stricter measures to combat COVID-19.

Furthermore, as economic stimulus spending reaches A$320 billion – including wage subsidies and free childcare – the government’s neo-liberal ideology appears to have fallen away (at least temporarily).

Critical lessons from other ruptures show that Australians must remain vigilant now, as old systems of authority rewire themselves. To stem COVID-19, governments have announced major societal restrictions in conjunction with the huge spending. These moves demand new kinds of accountability – as demonstrated by calls for bipartisan scrutiny of Australia’s COVID-19 response.

3. Rupture asks us to re-think our relationships with nature

When Australia burned last summer, few could avoid the immediacy of dead wildlife, devastated landscapes and hazardous air. Australians were overwhelmed by grief, and a new awareness of the impacts of climate change. New debates emerged about how our forests should be managed, and the pro-coal stance of the federal Coalition was challenged.

COVID-19 is also a wake-up call to humanity. It is one of many emerging infectious diseases that originated in animals – a product of our “war on nature” which includes deforestation and unregulated wildlife consumption.

Read more: Coronavirus is a wake-up call: our war with the environment is leading to pandemics

As British writer George Monbiot argues, the pandemic means that we can no longer maintain the “illusion of security” on a planet with “multiple morbidities” – looming food shortages, antibiotic resistance and climate breakdown.

Rupture invites us to re-think our relationships to nature. We must recognise her agency – as firestorm or microscopic virus – and our deep dependence upon her.

Looking ahead

Indian author Arundhati Roy recently wrote that, in these troubled times, rupture “offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves”.

The challenge now is to seize opportunities emerging from this rupture. As our economies hibernate, we’re learning how to transform. Carbon emissions have declined dramatically, and the merits of slowing down are becoming apparent. We must use this moment to re-align our relationships to one another, and to nature.

– ref. From the bushfires to coronavirus, our old ‘normal’ is gone forever. So what’s next? – https://theconversation.com/from-the-bushfires-to-coronavirus-our-old-normal-is-gone-forever-so-whats-next-134994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

It has been said we are “at war” with the COVID-19 coronavirus. I’m not drawn to martial metaphors, but that’s not wrong.

Another way to put it is that we, as a society, are in a strategic interaction with the virus.

The right analytic tools to study strategic interactions come from the field of game theory.

Read more: Economic theories that have changed us: game theory

Mathematicians and economists have developed these tools in earnest since John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944.

One of the most important ideas in game theory – something taught in undergraduate economics classes around the world – is thinking about the “equilibrium” of a game. That is, a situation where no player can improve their payoff by unilaterally changing their strategy.

John Nash (subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind), John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for “their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games”.

Calls for relaxation

It is these lessons a variety of Australian commentators have ignored in their claims social-distancing measures are too extreme.

John Roskam, the head of free-market think-thank the Institute of Public Affairs, has complained that “25 million Australians have been placed under indefinite house arrest, children’s playgrounds are locked and patrolled by security guards, and the police fly drones over beaches and parks”. Future generations, he says, “will quite rightly question whether there could have been a better way”.

The Australian’s Adam Creighton argues: “Rather than bluntly taking a sledgehammer to economic activity, it would be better to urgently boost the capacity of the health system, let the bulk of the population get on with their lives and take special precautions with at-risk groups.”

Good economists everywhere profoundly disagree. Here’s why.

Our game with the virus

The nature of our strategic interaction with SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19) is one where it attacks us, and we interact with one another. The players are the virus, the community and our policymakers who (to an extent that depends on compliance) control some of the rules of the game – namely, how much we interact with one another.

The payoff to the virus is simple. It wants to infect as many of us as possible.

The payoffs to us are more complicated – a combination of health and economic effects.

Economists like to distinguish between games that are played once, games that are repeated more than once but where the rules, players, and payoffs are the same each time, and games where players move in sequence. What we are always interested in is the game’s equilibrium, and the payoffs to the players in that equilibrium.

What we are seeing right now in Australia, in terms of the health and economics outcomes, is an equilibrium phenomenon.

We’ve put in place certain social-distancing rules – not as strict as some jurisdictions but stricter and sooner than others – and the economy is taking a hit because of the measures.

Official data show we are “flattening the curve”.

This is an equilibrium phenomenon. It is because of the social-distancing measures we are taking. It is because of our strategy in this horrible game against the virus.

When commentators conclude these measures are not needed because of the low infection and death rates in Australia, they are making an error of staggering proportions, with potentially grave implications.

They should be looking at the counterfactuals: New York or London, or Italy or Spain. Those places acted too late. Now Madrid is using an Olympic ice rink as a morgue and New York is planning “temporary internments” of the dead.

Strategic challenge

We are playing against an opponent that can multiply its damage exponentially. Its strategy is to infect multiple people who go on to infect multiple people, and so on.

The best response to that is fairly drastic lockdown provisions. These should have happened sooner in Australia, but our leaders at least responded faster than plenty of places where infections and deaths are soaring.

As we go forward it’s important to remember the virus’s exponential capacity for growth means easing social distancing even a little bit could allow the infection rate to bounce back dramatically.

How our policymakers manage the rules of the game until we have a widely deployed vaccine will be very challenging. They’ll need to remember the lessons of game theory. Because this is not a game we can afford to lose.

– ref. Vital Signs: a lesson from game theory the coronavirus contrarians ignore – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-a-lesson-from-game-theory-the-coronavirus-contrarians-ignore-135821

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adele Wessell, Associate Professor in History, Southern Cross University

The washing, drying, ironing, airing, pushing baby in his pram – these can all take on a different aspect if done with figure consciousness … Stretch to the ceiling Relax to the floor Swing to the window Swing to the door Bend by the table Foot on the chair Head to your knees Stretch in the air.

– Eileen Fowler, “Housework for the Figure” in Home Management (1954)

Before the aerobics revolution, Eileen Fowler was a health guru on the BBC’s first keep-fit radio program broadcast in 1954 with her catchwords: “Down with a bounce; with a bounce, come up.”

She moved on to television and then records for people to exercise at home.

“I don’t set aside certain hours for my exercises – they are with me all the time,” she wrote in Home Management.

“Domestic duties involve a great deal of movement and, by merging them with easy exercises, you can help your figure.”

Fowler’s objective was to make fitness fun. Prior to industrialisation, the working classes got exercise on the job – paid or unpaid. Manual labour was the primary way people got work done before machines, and even crafts like weaving were labour-intensive.

Before irons became lightweight in the early 20th century, they could have substituted for dumbbells. Hand-pumped vacuum cleaners would have made for a great arm pump challenge.

Stuck at home, I now seem to spend more time in the kitchen than in my bed at night. Deprived of pasta from the supermarket, I am making my own and heartened by the possibility that home cooking might make a comeback.

In the absence of an appliance, all this dough kneading for pasta and pizza and bread may be building my muscle strength as well as girth. It might be time to put away the food processor.

Read more: Making and breaking bread during the coronavirus pandemic: Home cooking could make a comeback

Powered by home electricity, mass production and technology, home appliances gradually reduced the labour – but not expectations – of unpaid work at home. As Wilhelmina Rawson assured her readers in The Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion in 1907, a lady with ten specific appliances, including a mincer and eggbeater, “can do the whole of her housework with very little exertion or fatigue”.

But gyms and sporting venues are now closed and fitness supplies are short on the shelves. Maybe it is time to flip the narrative again and get clean and fed and fit and decluttered at the same time.

And since attempts have failed to tackle the housework gap, would knowing vacuuming, window washing and mowing might be as good as a circuit class at the gym get men exer-cleaning?

Even today where women are the breadwinner with dependent children, they still spend five hours more per week then men on housework. After losing his job, a man is likely to do less housework, not more, and the time his partner spends on housework is likely to increase.

“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition,” wrote Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex. But the torture for some of us are the sets and reps that don’t result in a clean house.

If you are looking at housework as a workout, you can cardio-vac or do squats while you are emptying the dishwasher. And YouTuber Lizzy Williamson promises we won’t look at housework the same way once we incorporate her heart-pumping, whole-body-toning exercises into our clean-up.

Tips for house workouts

Play music

Eileen Fowler did not have the benefit of Bluetooth ear phones, but you do not have to subject the whole family to your soundtrack while you dust and distract. Spotify has an album of Housework Hits for all varieties of chores or Housework Songs by artists you might be more familiar with if you’re struggling to put together your own playlist.

Cook from scratch

If you are one of those people lucky enough to score flour and yeast you can join the stay-at-home bread boom. If you missed out on yeast, you can make it with beer, but you will not get the knead-ercise.

Old cookbooks like the Country Women’s Association’s Coronation Cookery Book may be better than new ones if you want to make your mashed potato go further, or you need a substitute for eggs, or milk is scarce. These old books also often include cleaning tips and other useful advice, like how to tan sheepskins or make your own soap.

Democratise domesticity

Domestic equality between men and women has not been achieved despite the idea that revolutionary transformations are taking place. While someone might need to delegate, there is no point imagining the drudgery and boredom of housework should not be shared equally as well as its physical benefits.

Housework might not be sufficient to provide all the benefits associated with physical activity, and unless you live with very dirty people in a huge mansion you might not find enough windows to work your arms.

I have had no success convincing my children either that housework might substitute for the sport they are missing. But, inspired by Eileen Fowler, I have dusted and polished and tightened my stomach muscles cleaning high ledges while waiting for the pizza dough to rise.

– ref. Great time to try: cleaning the house (while fitting in a workout) – https://theconversation.com/great-time-to-try-cleaning-the-house-while-fitting-in-a-workout-135816

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marilyn McMahon, Deputy Dean, School of Law, Deakin University

A distinctive feature of the prosecution of Cardinal George Pell is that the former choirboy who accused him of sexual abuse (known in the High Court as Complainant “A”) was regarded as a credible witness by the jury that convicted Pell in 2018 and the majority of the Victorian Court of Appeal that dismissed Pell’s appeal.

The High Court made no express conclusion in relation to “A”, accepting that assessment of witness credibility was a task for the jury.

So how, in these circumstances, could Pell be acquitted? The answer to that question goes to the heart of the prosecution of sexual offences.

Read more: The jury may be out on the jury system after George Pell’s successful appeal

The trials of sexual offences are distinctive

Despite many decades of significant law reform, conviction rates in the trials of sexual offences have remained relatively low.

For instance, in addition to under-reporting of such crimes to police and the attrition of cases before trial, the rate of conviction in sexual offence trials in many jurisdictions is lower than for other offences.

In NSW and in the County Court of Victoria, less than half the accused on trial for a sexual offence are found guilty.

These low conviction rates occur because sex offence trials are distinctive from other trials. They are characterised by relatively low levels of guilty pleas and high rates of appeals.

Both these factors contribute to relatively high acquittal rates for those put on trial for sexual offences.

It also means that, unlike victims of other types of crimes, victims of sexual offences are more likely to be required to give evidence at trial.

Consequently, the credibility of complainants often becomes the key issue.

Why are trials for sexual offences so distinctive?

Several circumstances make the position of complainants in sexual offence trials uniquely vulnerable.

Sexual offences are often perpetrated by men against women. As such, scepticism and frank sexist bias, often previously legally entrenched, affects the investigation and prosecution of these cases.

Additionally, many sexual offences also involve child victims, who are particularly vulnerable in the context of an adversarial criminal trial.

Read more: Juries will soon learn more about people accused of child sex crimes. Will it lead to fairer trials?

Historically, the common law had multiple requirements that effectively undermined the credibility of female and child victims who gave evidence in sexual offence trials.

For instance, convictions could not be obtained on the uncorroborated evidence of a child. In addition, a judge would warn a jury about the danger of convicting a defendant in cases involving a delay in the reporting of the offence.

Contemporary reform has abrogated these laws. However, some critics believe many jurors still hold pro-defendant and anti-victim attitudes in cases like these, contributing to continuing low conviction rates.

These attitudes can make prosecuting sexual offences difficult. If a complainant has consumed alcohol before being sexually assaulted, for instance, police have been found to be less likely to further investigate the case.

Prosecutions are also hampered when there has been a delay in reporting an offence, as this makes it more challenging to gather evidence.

Another long-recognised difficulty in prosecuting sexual offences is the fact the conduct often takes place without any other witness being present.

In this situation, it will essentially be a “he said, she said”-type trial. And in this context, a successful prosecution depends on the perceived truthfulness and reliability of the complainant’s evidence.

Read more: New laws help juries understand why victims of sexual violence struggle to recall their assaults

Here, again, bias and cultural assumptions come into play. The High Court has noted assessments of credibility based on the demeanour of a witness are highly subjective.

But in Pell’s case, “A” was regarded as a credible witness by the jury, as well as by the majority of the Victorian Court of Appeal. So, why was being a credible witness not sufficient to guarantee a conviction?

The issue of reasonable doubt

As Pell’s acquittal clearly demonstrates, it’s possible for a court to accept a complainant in a sexual offence case is credible, while simultaneously finding the accused not guilty.

Understandably, many victims and their supporters have found this situation to be paradoxical and unacceptable.

The reason for this goes to the issue of reasonable doubt.

In essence, credible and reliable victims raise the likelihood the offences were perpetrated against them.

In Pell’s case, the majority of the Victorian Court of Appeal found the complainant to be a truthful witness whose evidence appeared to be “entirely authentic”. They dismissed the appeal, concluding the evidence of other witnesses did not require a jury to have reasonable doubt about Pell’s guilt.

However, the dissenting judge on the Court of Appeal and the judges of the High Court gave greater weight to evidence by other witnesses that was unchallenged and inconsistent with the evidence of the complainant.

The High Court concluded:

…notwithstanding that the jury found A to be a credible and reliable witness, the evidence as a whole was not capable of excluding a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.

The standard of reasonable doubt is, of course, a high hurdle that must be met. Some research suggests mock jurors find understanding and applying this standard to be particularly difficult in sex offence trials.

Consequently, while many of the historical biases limiting the evidence and credibility of complainants in sexual offence trials have now been formally removed, the criminal standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” remains a demanding standard.

And this means even credible witnesses may find the trial of their accused results in an acquittal.

– ref. Pell decision: why sexual offence trials often result in acquittal, even with credible witnesses – https://theconversation.com/pell-decision-why-sexual-offence-trials-often-result-in-acquittal-even-with-credible-witnesses-135932

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Palmer, Associate professor, Deakin University

The law on what we can and can’t do during the coronavirus outbreak is changing on an almost hourly basis. Some of what is written now might be overtaken by the shifts in the pandemic powers of control.

But we need to make sure people have trust in any new powers given to authorities. These need to be clear to all, and applied consistently and transparently, which is not the case at the moment.

For example, over the weekend a Victorian teenager was fined A$1,652 for leaving home to go for a driving lesson with her mother. Police said their activities were “non-essential travel”.

The advice from New South Wales police at that time said such activities were fine in NSW. Victoria police have since withdrawn the fine.

But NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller told the ABC’s Fran Kelly that in NSW you cannot travel to your holiday home unless it is “essential”. Victorians are told they can head to their holiday homes over Easter as long as they otherwise maintain strict quarantining on arrival.

Read more: Coronavirus has seriously tested our border security. Have we learned from our mistakes?

These are just two examples in two states of a broader underlying problem that Americans would deem unconstitutionally “void for vagueness”, a law invalid because it’s not sufficiently clear.

Calls for common sense do little to ease concerns that things are likely to worsen. The broad coronavirus containment and mitigation strategies might continue for many more months.

Remember the Fitzgerald inquiry

Perhaps we can learn from the landmark Fitzgerald inquiry into Queensland policing, more than three decades ago.

Read more: Thirty years on, the Fitzgerald Inquiry still looms large over Queensland politics

The inquiry identified widespread systemic corruption in police, politics and civil society. This inquiry represented a change in police accountability.

There is another, lesser-known or appreciated aspect of the Fitzgerald inquiry. It emphasised that police must have the consent of the community: police have to ensure their practices generate trust that people will be treated fairly and police discretion will be used appropriately.

These are standard issues in the policing scholarship.

Pandemic policing raises many issues that cut to the core of policing by consent.

How policing resources are mobilised and the decision-making processes and practices on the ground are vital. Just look at the confused circumstances of the disembarkation of the Ruby Princess cruise ship in Sydney, which has been a key cause of the spread of COVID-19 in NSW and beyond.

The Australian Border Force, NSW health authorities and NSW police were variously blamed, so surely there needs to be a major investigation into network failure and specific responsibilities.

Police discretion needs to be fair

Everyday street policing is central to pandemic policing: when do police decide to intervene and ask someone their purpose for being out and about?

Vague legislative provisions are often the source of poor use of discretion by police. But the answer is not to be found in taking away any discretion, the hallmark of “zero-tolerance policing”.

There are many things that might be done, but a few simple ones come to mind.

Any legislation or regulation must be precisely drafted. This has not been happening and is causing confusion. Just look at the level of uncertainty in NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

We need clearly stated offences, clear lines of reasoning and a clear demarcation between preferred practice or guidance and regulated conduct.

For instance, what does staying in your own “area” for permitted out-of-home travel mean?

A discussion on ABC radio in Melbourne recently descended into callers chastising a man who thought he would like to travel to the beach for exercise well away from his residence. Live on air, he asked Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton if that was okay.

The chief commissioner didn’t say yes or no, he just called for “common sense”. But what would be reasonable and common sense – 1km, 2km, 5km or 10km, etc? Is driving to exercise allowed?

More than common sense

Common sense is not the way to ensure police discretion is going to be used appropriately, nor does it give the community confidence in the law. It might only be the odd case here and there at the moment causing confusion or consternation but it is changing daily.

Data on the use of this discretion must be recorded and made publicly available in close to real time. Equally important is the need to have data on policing activities.

Most jurisdictions have a crime statistics agency and these agencies should be given responsibility to collate data to identify who is being stopped, where, for what offence and with what outcomes. Report this every day as we do health data.

It does not need to be data on the final outcome that determines whether the fine is paid or challenged in the courts some months later. But it needs to reflect the immediate policing activities and it needs to be made public and in a timely manner.

Read more: A matter of trust: coronavirus shows again why we value expertise when it comes to our health

As the pandemic continues, and it may get worse, pandemic policing might head in directions the broader population has never experienced.

So 30 years on from Fitzgerald, we need to reinforce the notion that policing by consent, with transparency and accountability, is vital.

If public support is to be maintained over the course of the pandemic we need to make sure we have legal clarity and a detailed understanding of what is being done in the name of the exception. Pandemic policing must have very real limits and robust, real-time accountability.

– ref. Pandemic policing needs to be done with the public’s trust, not confusion – https://theconversation.com/pandemic-policing-needs-to-be-done-with-the-publics-trust-not-confusion-135716

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Mudgway, Senior Lecturer in Law, Auckland University of Technology

As millions of people are moving work and social interactions online to protect themselves from COVID-19, existing online safety measures may not be enough to deal with a surge in harassment and abuse.

Concerns about rising levels of scamming and harassment prompted online safety organisation NetSafe to issue a warning to users to maintain vigilance. This abuse has included threats of violence and explicit racism and xenophobia.

Online abuse breaches several human rights. We argue that governments have obligations under international law and should establish a digital human rights charter, with special protections built in for women and children.

Read more: ‘Zoombombers’ want to troll your online meetings. Here’s how to stop them

Cyber violence against women

Online platforms replicate culture with all its offline risks and inequalities.

Offline, discrimination against women permeates all aspects of our society, including the family, education, the workplace, the legal system and government. Discrimination manifests in different ways, including violence against women.

These unequal gender dynamics repeat online, resulting in women being subjected to sexist, misogynistic and violent content. In 2018, a UN women’s human rights expert recognised cyber violence as a specific form of violence against women.

In a 2017 Amnesty International survey, nearly a quarter (23%) of women surveyed across eight developed countries said they had experienced online abuse or harassment more than once. Of those women, 41% felt their physical safety was threatened on at least one occasion.

In New Zealand, a third of women reported being victims of online harassment. Of those who experienced abuse online:

• 75% had trouble sleeping well
• 49% felt their personal safety was at risk
• 32% felt the safety of their families was at risk
• 72% were less able to focus on everyday tasks
• 70% experienced lower self-esteem or loss of self-confidence
• two-thirds felt a sense of powerlessness.

Almost half (49%) reduced their use of social media or left platforms altogether.

The UN’s Human Rights Council identified widespread online violence against women as a significant reason for the global digital divide between men and women.

Online violence against women by (mostly) men is especially persistent on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It includes online harassment, cyberstalking, “doxing” (where private information is shared by others online) and revenge pornography.

Read more: Meet ‘Sara’, ‘Sharon’ and ‘Mel’: why people spreading coronavirus anxiety on Twitter might actually be bots

Obligations of governments and online platforms

Cyber violence breaches international human rights laws, including the right to freedom of expression (fewer women are likely to share their opinions or thoughts online), the right to be free from discrimination and violence, the right to information about health (including potentially life-saving updates about COVID-19) and the right to privacy.

International human rights law applies both offline and online.

Social media platforms have created community standards to protect users’ human rights, but they may not be evolving fast enough during disruptive times such as we are experiencing now. The massive increase in use is likely to amplify the dark side of social media.

Governments around the world have been slow to use their legislative powers to regulate online platforms. The live streaming of the Christchurch mosque attacks on March 15 2019 highlighted the platforms’ failure to control the spread of hateful content.

An international agreement to eliminate violent extremist content online has been difficult to achieve.

Read more: Christchurch’s legacy of fighting violent extremism online must go further – deep into the dark web

Protecting rights and lives online

While platforms remain global with “one size fits all” community standards, governments have different responses to restricting individual freedom of expression.

Governments should consider establishing an international charter on digital human rights, which all social media platforms could adopt. Such a charter would enable a coherent and consistent response to cyber violence, in a world that is now almost exclusively online.

There are some practical steps we can all take. These steps include reporting online violations, blocking people or groups, and closely monitoring connections.

If you are experiencing serious online bullying, harassment, revenge porn or other forms of abuse and intimidation, contact police who may take action under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015.

– ref. As use of digital platforms surges, we’ll need stronger global efforts to protect human rights online – https://theconversation.com/as-use-of-digital-platforms-surges-well-need-stronger-global-efforts-to-protect-human-rights-online-135678

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Doughney, Emeritus professor, Victoria University

The loss of international students due to COVID-19 restrictions, and predicted second semester declines, will see universities lose between A$3 and 4.5 billion, according to Universities Australia.

The higher education sector was dealt another blow this week when the government said universities wouldn’t get the increased access to the A$130bn JobKeeper fund for registered charities.

Universities estimate more than 21,000 jobs are at risk in the next six months, and more after that.

On April 3, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said about international students:

If they’re not in a position to support themselves, then there is the alternative for them to return to their home countries.

This was chilling in its indifference. The Commonwealth has good reason to support universities hit by falling international student revenues as part of its pandemic stimulus measures.

Current university jobs depend on this revenue. According to a Deloitte Access Economics report commissioned by Universities Australia, universities contributed A$41 billion to the Australian economy and supported a total of 259,100 full-time jobs in 2018.

The government also has good reasons to support international students who have lost jobs and are not eligible for JobKeeper or JobSeeker payments.

Read more: JobKeeper payment: how will it work, who will miss out and how to get it?

International students in Australia contribute more than just the fees they pay. They also spend money while they are here, generating jobs and income in the broader economy.

In fact, the international education sector has become so economically significant that to burn it now will dampen Australia’s post-pandemic recovery.

Just how significant?

Since 1985, when the Commonwealth allowed Australian universities and colleges to charge full rather than subsidised fees, revenue from international students has grown exponentially in real terms, flattened only briefly by the GFC.

Exponential is a familiar term in these pandemic days. It’s another way of talking about compounding – growth on growth. The blue line in the below chart on Australia’s education exports is exponential.

Total education exports – as Australia’s national accounts categorise them – comprise both the fees international students pay and the amount they spend on goods and services while in Australia.

Chart one

Education exports as we know them today had grown from near zero in the 1970s to about A$37 billion last financial year (2018-19). In 2018-19, they comprised almost 40% of Australia’s exports of services and 9% of exports of all goods and services.

By comparison, Australia’s total rural exports to the world were about $44 billion last financial year.

Read more: The coronavirus outbreak is the biggest crisis ever to hit international education

Universities are scrambling to determine the size of the inevitable international student decline they will experience. For instance, on March 1, 2020 56% of international student visa holders from China were outside Australia, and Chinese students account for one-third of total education exports.

Chart two

From 2003 to 2018, international onshore student revenue rose, on average as a share of all universities’ revenue, from 14% to 26%. For some universities, the dependency is even greater, well exceeding 30%.

Overall student revenue also grew, both as a share of, and by a larger proportion than, total revenue. Neither the Commonwealth’s funding share nor spending by universities on academic teaching have kept up. The latter has fallen as a share of student revenue from 37% in 2003 to 30% in 2018.

Chart three

What the government should do

Education minister Dan Tehan’s message to international students will win few friends. On the one hand it says “you are our friends, our classmates, our colleagues and members of our community” and allows those who have been in Australia for longer than 12 months access to their superannuation.

Cynically it adds that where we need you (such as in nursing and aged care), we will let you work more than your allowed 40 hours per fortnight.

And no JobSeeker payments, even for those here for more than a year, but merely access to what must be piddling superannuation accounts, is a shocking way to treat “our friends” and “members of our community”.

Considering the amount of money these students have brought in to our economy, giving them access to JobSeeker payments would benefit us all.

Read more: 3 ways the coronavirus outbreak will affect international students and how unis can help

Higher education also requires a nationally coordinated policy response of its own – not just one that ties it in with other measures.

The government should consider reintroducing demand-driven funding, which operated between 2012 and 2017. Under this system, universities could enrol unlimited numbers of bachelor-degree students into any discipline other than medicine and be paid for every one of them.

Restoring this policy is especially important in the light of an inevitable increase in domestic students that will follow this pandemic, and rising unemployment. Dan Tehan has signalled more support is in store for domestic students, but it’s not clear whether demand-driven funding will be restored.

Read more: Demand-driven funding for universities is frozen. What does this mean and should the policy be restored?

Giving universities access to the same JobKeeper status as charities, who are eligible if they have experienced a 15% revenue reduction, makes sense. It would mean universities would be better placed to support their most vulnerable employees, namely the huge proportion of casual teaching, research and administrative staff on which they rely.

Universities will downsize

Without adequate government support, universities will be forced to shrink, with job losses likely occurring in proportion to the decline in revenue. Universities’ expenses have grown broadly in proportion to their total revenue.

It hasn’t been as if the growth in international student revenue was quarantined and devoted to particular purposes. These were just bundled up with domestic student revenues and funded growth.

In the absence of a nationally coordinated response for the sector, reduced revenues will also have disproportionate effects. Some universities have the cash reserves to absorb losses, shrink and, as it were, ride out the storm.

Poorer universities are not in such a position. Some might not have the cash reserves to permit an easy reduction in size. If forced by insufficient support to contemplate redundancies, their liabilities will increase and some might fail.

– ref. Without international students, Australia’s universities will downsize – and some might collapse altogether – https://theconversation.com/without-international-students-australias-universities-will-downsize-and-some-might-collapse-altogether-132869

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Oliver, Research Leader in Respiratory cellular and molecular biology at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and Professor, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney

Harry Potter author JK Rowling says a breathing technique has helped her coronavirus-like respiratory symptoms, a claim that has been widely reported and shared on social media.

Her tweet includes a video from a UK hospital doctor describing the technique, a type of controlled coughing. This involves taking six deep breaths and on the last one covering your mouth and coughing.

The internet is full of home grown cures for the coronavirus. And when doctors propose them, they appear credible.

While special breathing techniques have their place in hospital, under the supervision of a respiratory physiotherapist or respiratory doctor, and for certain medical conditions, using them at home to manage coronavirus symptoms could be dangerous.

The technique in the video could help spread the coronavirus to people close by.

By coughing, you could directly infect people with droplets, or these droplets on someone’s hands can be transferred to a surface others can touch.

So JK Rowling’s well-meaning advice could inadvertedly help spread the virus to your family, or to the person next to you on the bus.

Controlled coughing helps with cystic fibrosis

The cells in our lungs produce a sticky mucus as part of our body’s defence system. And when we have a viral lung infection, such as with the virus that causes COVID-19 or the infuenza virus, we produce more of it.

The mucus traps the invading pathogen. Normally, this mucus is removed from the lungs by the movement of tiny hair-like projections in our airways. From there, we either swallow the mucus or cough it out as phlegm.

Read more: Health Check: why do I have a cough and what can I do about it?

However, sometime we produce so much mucus it is difficult to breathe. The mucus can block our tiny airways, preventing us from obtaining oxygen from our lungs.

In other diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, controlled coughing can help remove the mucus and make it easier for people to breathe.

This technique may be done as part of chest physiotherapy, along with other lung clearance techniques, in a hospital. The technique is not dangerous, but the contents of what is coughed out can be.

Read more: Explainer: what is cystic fibrosis and how is it treated?

So can it help with the coronavirus?

So what’s the evidence controlled coughing could help people manage their coronavirus symptoms? Put simply, there are no clinical trials or good evidence.

One common COVID-19 symptom is a dry cough. So it’s difficult to imagine why controlled coughing would help when you’re coughing so much anyway.

Read more: Can coronavirus spread through food? Can anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen make it worse? Coronavirus claims checked by experts

Is there any harm in trying?

There is a very real risk that unintentionally this technique would actually spread the virus.

When we cough we produce a lot of droplets of mucus from the lungs that are spread as a spray. My research has also shown breathing out forcefully is enough to propel viruses from the lungs this way.

Either way large sprays of viruses could infect other people.

In hospital, this risk is minimised by having specialised negative pressure rooms that remove the contaminated air. Patients wear masks to capture the sprays and clinical staff wear personal protective equipment, including masks and face shields. There are also strict infection control measures, such as limits on visitors and hand washing. Yet the risks of transmission remain high.

Read more: No, 5G radiation doesn’t cause or spread the coronavirus. Saying it does is destructive

But if you practise controlled coughing at home or on the bus, it’s easy to see how you could inadvertently spread the virus.

And of course, the technique doesn’t kill the virus or cure anyone.

So what are we to make of all this?

So why did JK Rowling endorse this technique? In essence, it’s because she believed it helped her, and thought it would help others.

However, her tweet says she hadn’t been tested for COVID-19, so it’s not certain she had the infection. And she may or may not have benefited from the technique. Perhaps her symptoms may have improved by themselves anyway. It’s hard to know.

My advice is to seek medical advice if you suspect you have the coronavirus rather than rely on testimonials, however well meaning.

Read more: Coronavirus: how long does it take to get sick? How infectious is it? Will you always have a fever? COVID-19 basics explained

– ref. Does JK Rowling’s breathing technique cure the coronavirus? No, it could help spread it – https://theconversation.com/does-jk-rowlings-breathing-technique-cure-the-coronavirus-no-it-could-help-spread-it-135935

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Glasziou, Professor of Medicine, Bond University

Should members of the public be wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? It’s a controversial question, with different countries and authorities giving different advice.

We have reviewed the results of more than a dozen randomised trials of facemasks and transmission of respiratory illnesses. We found the current best evidence suggests wearing a mask to avoid viral respiratory infections such as COVID-19 offers minimal protection, if any.

Conflicting recommendations

Two of the world’s major health organisations disagree on mask wearing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) currently discourages mask use:

There is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can prevent them from infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.

WHO does recommend special masks (N95 masks or equivalent) plus other protection for health-care workers working with people who have, or are suspected to have, COVID-19.

By contrast, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has recently recommended everyone wear a (cloth) mask. However, this is to prevent infected people passing on the infection, not to prevent the wearer getting infected.

Who is right? Does wearing a mask protect the wearer? Does it protect others?

Read more: Do homemade masks work? Sometimes. But leave the design to the experts

Understanding the spread

To examine this, we need to first look at how coronavirus spreads and how masks might stop it.

There are several possible routes to infection. An infected person can cough, sneeze or breathe while within about two metres of another person, and the virus lands in the other person’s eyes, nose or mouth(1).

Another route is when an infected person coughs or sneezes onto their hand or onto a surface. The uninfected person then shakes the hand (2a) or touches the surface (2b), and transfers the virus to their own eye, nose or mouth.

It is possible that an infected person can also cough or sneeze to create an airborne spread (3) beyond the close contact range – but it is controversial whether this last route is a major means of transmission.

We don’t know how much transmission occurs by each of these routes for COVID-19. It’s also unclear how much protection a mask would offer in each case.

Current best evidence

To resolve this question, we analysed 14 randomised trials of mask wearing and infection for influenza-like illnesses. (There are no randomised trials involving COVID-19 itself, so the best we can do is look at similar diseases.)

When we combined the results of these trials that studied the effect of masks versus no masks in health-care workers and the general population, they did not show that wearing masks leads to any substantial reduction of influenza-like illness. However, the studies were too small to rule out a minor effect for masks.

Why don’t masks protect the wearer?

There are several possible reasons why masks don’t offer significant protection. First, masks may not do much without eye protection. We know from animal and laboratory experiments that influenza or other coronaviruses can enter the eyes and travel to the nose and into the respiratory system.

While standard and special masks provide incomplete protection, special masks combined with goggles appear to provide complete protection in laboratory experiments. However, there are no studies in real-world situations measuring the results of combined mask and eyewear.

The apparent minimal impact of wearing masks might also be because people didn’t use them properly. For example, one study found less than half of the participants wore them “most of the time”. People may also wear masks inappropriately, or touch a contaminated part of the mask when removing it and transfer the virus to their hand, then their eyes and thus to the nose.

Masks may also provide a false sense of security, meaning wearers might do riskier things such as going into crowded spaces and places.

Do masks protect others?

Could masks protect others from the virus that might have been spread by the mask wearer? A recent Hong Kong laboratory study found some evidence masks may prevent the spread of viruses from the wearer.

They took people with influenza-like symptoms, gave half of them masks and half no masks, and for 30 minutes collected viruses from the air they breathed out, including coughs.

Masks did reduce the amounts of droplets and aerosols containing detectable amounts of virus. But only 17 of the 111 subjects had a coronavirus, and these were not the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. While the study is promising, it needs to be repeated urgently.

We also don’t know how this reduction of aerosols and droplets translates to reduction of infections in the real world. If there is an effect, it may be diluted by several factors such as ill people who don’t wear a mask and “well” people who have no symptoms but are still carrying and spreading the virus.

Masks for some?

If wearing masks does substantially reduces the spread of the infection to others, what should we do? We could ask everyone with any respiratory symptoms to wear masks in public. That could supplement other strategies such as social distancing, testing, tracking and tracing to reduce transmission.

To also capture infected people without symptoms, we could ask everyone to wear masks in indoor public spaces. Outdoors is more difficult, since most people pose little or no risk. Perhaps, as we reduce restrictions, masks could also be required at some outdoor crowd events, such as sporting events or concerts.

Another possibility is a “2 x 2” rule: if you are outdoors and within 2 metres of other people for more than 2 minutes you need to wear a mask.

Mask wearing for the possibly infected, to prevent spreading the infection, warrants rigorous and rapid investigation. It could be an alternative or a supplement to social distancing, hand hygiene, testing, and lockdowns.

The authors would like to thank John Conly, Liz Dooley, Lubna Al-Ansary, Susan Michie and Amanda McCullough for comments.

– ref. Should everyone be wearing face masks? It’s complicated – https://theconversation.com/should-everyone-be-wearing-face-masks-its-complicated-135548

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brad Elphinstone, Lecturer in psychology., Swinburne University of Technology

The same week social distancing measures were announced in Australia (March 16 – March 22), sales of game consoles leaped 285.6%. Prior to this, sales were declining month on month.

We’ve also seen a 278.5% spike in physical game sales, spurred by the release of Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. COVID-19 is clearly having an impact on our shopping habits beyond toilet paper.

Looking at the games leaping up the UK charts in late March, the top five (which all enjoyed a 200%+ bump in sales) provide robust multiplayer experiences. Apart from Doom and Animal Crossing, we see the latest releases from Call of Duty, FIFA, and Mario Kart. These games aren’t simply about escaping reality, but about going somewhere together.

Yet, to those who aren’t already avid players, video games might be viewed as juvenile – a waste of time lacking redemptive qualities. In the era of the quantified self, where we’re pushed to use technology to track and “optimise” ourselves endlessly, even those who do enjoy games may feel guilty for not being more “productive”.

On the contrary, we have found video games help satisfy fundamental psychological needs, and therefore have enormous value for all ages.

What people need

According to Self-Determination Theory, people have three psychological needs:

• autonomy is about feeling you have choices, can act in accordance with your values, and pursue meaningful goals
• competence is about feeling effective and capable of overcoming problems
• relatedness is about feeling connected to others.

The satisfaction of these basic psychological needs leads to greater well-being and motivation. If being stuck at home is reducing your happiness and well-being, this could be due to reduced satisfaction of one or more of these needs. For instance, your sense of autonomy may be undermined when forced to self-isolate, as you can’t partake in many of your usual activities.

Read more: Video games could help uncover your hidden talents – and make you happier

Your sense of competence might have also taken a hit, by missing out on the daily “wins” that can come through leisure pursuits or problem-solving at work. You also likely can’t see your colleagues, neighbours, friends, and family as often, which can undermine feelings of relatedness.

Feeling powerless is also common during pandemics.

Fortunately, many of us have found other ways of satisfying these needs through technology, such as using webcams and microphones to have online interactions. It’s not the same as a face-to-face meeting, but it helps maintain connection and satisfies our desire for relatedness.

What games provide

Video games can also satisfy these needs and may be a great way to spend some time during this crisis.

Research shows games help facilitate a sense of autonomy by giving players freedom of choice and, depending on the game, a meaningful narrative for completing tasks. Well-designed games also facilitate a feeling of competence by presenting challenges that aren’t too hard or too easy and feel rewarding to overcome.

They offer a clearly defined “sense of progress and achievability”, as Jennifer Scheurle explains. This is especially valuable during lockdown when your days may feel monotonous.

Games also offer a sense of relatedness. This could be through playing with friends, or even connecting with a stranger online (with whom you may be battling a common enemy).

Humans are hardwired for connection. Plenty of literature has established a link between loneliness and early death, and increased risk of disease for older people.

Research suggests gamers can also feel a sense of relatedness with virtual characters and the game world itself, adding to the overall enjoyment of playing. Caring about a character and their plight (relatedness) motivates players to help them (autonomy), and enhances their sense of competence when they succeed.

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

All good things in moderation

While playing games is psychologically valuable, it’s important to do so in moderation. The Child Mind Institute recommends about one to two (maximum) hours per day of gaming for children. For kids older than six, they encourage parents to “determine the appropriate amount of time”.

While there is no universal consensus on how much gaming is “too much” for adults, the answer is likely less to do with hours of play, and more to do with being aware of one’s susceptibility to video game addiction. That said, research suggests only about 1-3% of gamers are at risk of addiction. If you are concerned, you can try this test that was trialled in a paper published by the International Journal of Health and Addiction.

Eating healthy, minimising alcohol consumption, exercising, and getting about seven to nine hours of sleep are also important for maintaining physical and mental health.

In the virtual world, do virtually anything

If life in lockdown is creating a sense of ennui for you, consider playing video games to keep your basic psychological needs satisfied. If you’re already playing, keep doing it (in moderation) without feeling guilty.

And if you see yourself as “not much of a gamer”, still consider giving it a try. The range of digital games is enormously broad, and there are many online guides for beginners wanting to get in on the action.

Whether you enjoy chess, want to explore the ocean, or live the island life while working for a Japanese raccoon dog – there’s something out there for you.

– ref. Time well spent, not wasted: video games are boosting well-being during the coronavirus lockdown – https://theconversation.com/time-well-spent-not-wasted-video-games-are-boosting-well-being-during-the-coronavirus-lockdown-135642

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Harris, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, UNSW

As part of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, all elective surgeries across Australia have been temporarily cancelled.

Elective surgery is non-urgent surgery people choose (elect) to have: things like cataract surgery, joint replacement, tonsillectomy, hernia repair and cosmetic surgery.

There are more than two million hospital admissions involving elective surgery in Australia each year; two-thirds in private hospitals and one-third in public hospitals. Accordingly, elective surgeries make up a huge part of overall health expenditure.

So when they stop all of a sudden, it’s a big deal.

Read more: Private hospitals get grace period before freeze on non-urgent elective surgery

What does this mean for patients?

People who were booked in for surgery will simply have to wait. Because their surgery was deemed non-urgent, this might not be too bad if the shutdown lasts for six weeks. But what if it lasts for six months?

Private patients will face delays that are probably less than the usual waiting lists in public hospitals (up to 12 months for elective surgery), but public patients may have to wait even longer.

This large scale halt on elective surgeries is unprecedented, so we don’t have any data on what kinds of consequences we might expect. But research suggests people who wait for surgery can deteriorate proportional to the length of time they wait. So a few risks come to mind.

Patients may need to rely on strong pain medications for a longer time, and could be more likely to become dependent on these.

Older people in particular may have to cope for longer with restricted mobility while waiting for a hip replacement. Or they may be at increased risk of falls due to poor eyesight while waiting to have their cataracts fixed.

So while this move has been designed to reduce pressure on our hospitals, we may end up with more acute presentations to emergency departments.

It’s not all bad news

Some people, however, might find their condition improves. While cataracts won’t clear up on their own, many elective procedures are done for conditions that can improve without surgery.

My area of specialty is orthopaedics, the branch of surgery concerned with conditions involving the musculoskeletal system.

In all recent studies where researchers have tested common elective orthopaedic surgical procedures against a placebo (just an incision, for example), the improvement in symptoms has been quite good, regardless of whether or not participants had the surgery or the placebo.

My colleagues and I currently have a review in press looking at studies where patients have been randomised to surgery or no surgery for chronic musculoskeletal pain. These procedures include spine fusions and decompressions for back and leg pain, carpal tunnel decompression, arthroscopic surgery for shoulder and knee pain, and joint replacement surgery.

We found only 14% of the studies showed surgery was clearly better than not doing the surgery. In most studies it was a toss-up, or the patients who had surgery fared worse.

Read more: Surgery isn’t always the best option, and the decision shouldn’t just lie with the doctor

Even elective procedures we know to be effective, such as knee replacements, have alternatives. One study compared patients who underwent knee replacement surgery to patients who didn’t, where both groups were given a 12-week physiotherapy program.

While the surgery group demonstrated better results, those treated without surgery also improved. And two-thirds had avoided surgery up to two years later.

Maximising patient education about the risks and benefits of treatment options using specially designed “decision aids” is another technique that has reduced the uptake of elective surgery.

In New South Wales, education and non-surgical treatment for people on waiting lists for knee replacements has resulted in more than 10% of patients coming off the waiting list because of improved symptoms. (Weight loss alone can significantly reduce symptoms from knee arthritis.)

Decision aids are not not commonly used for elective surgery in Australia but could be taken up more widely.

What will happen after the pandemic?

We will obviously see an increase in elective surgery once the ban is lifted, but I predict the increase will not equate to the decline during this shutdown.

First, the demand for surgery is generated during surgical consultations, and these have declined considerably.

Second, financial strain will mean people will be less likely to agree to any out of pocket costs, and possibly fewer people will be insured.

Finally, people will realise they might not need the surgery. In effect, we may be “flattening the curve” of post-virus elective surgery partly by realising much of it can be avoided.

Read more: What steps hospitals can take if coronavirus leads to a shortage of beds

But unless the forces that dictate our usual rates of elective surgery change, the rates will eventually return to normal. This is because we have a health system that drives specific, quantifiable treatments for diagnosed conditions.

For example, the system is geared at providing and reimbursing knee replacements, not the education, weight loss and exercise programs that might reduce the need for them.

There is considerable room to lower the rates of many common elective procedures, even without a forced shutdown.

Read more: Why do we wait so long in hospital emergency departments and for elective surgery?

– ref. The coronavirus ban on elective surgeries might show us many people can avoid going under the knife – https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-ban-on-elective-surgeries-might-show-us-many-people-can-avoid-going-under-the-knife-135325

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Jenkins, Professor, Respiratory Medicine, UNSW Sydney and Clinical Professor at the University of Sydney, George Institute for Global Health

The new respiratory coronavirus COVID-19 is particularly worrying for the 2.7 million Australians who already suffer from asthma. That’s roughly one in nine people.

Viral respiratory infections, in particular those that cause the common cold, typically trigger flareups of asthma. They are the main reason for asthma episodes in both children and adults during autumn and winter.

So it’s natural for asthmatics to fear they may be more at risk during the coronavirus pandemic.

We don’t yet know if people with asthma are more susceptible to serious outcomes if they get COVID-19.

But there’s plenty asthmatics can do to minimise the impact of any viral infection, whether it’s the common cold or coronavirus.

Good asthma control

Asthma is characterised by inflammation in the lining of the lung’s air passages. For most asthmatic adults and some asthmatic children, the condition is long-term.

Asthmatic airway inflammation persists over time, even between acute attacks, and contributes significantly to day-to-day symptoms for some people.

If this airway inflammation is not treated, it can result in progressive narrowing of the airways. Normal lung function may never return.

Having “good asthma control” is the key starting point to reducing your risk.

That includes:

• having minimal or no day-to-day symptoms
• no night-time waking
• no asthma attacks and
• good lung function, such that you can do all your normal daily activities without any limitation.

Good asthma control is eminently achievable with regular medication (both relievers and preventers).

Read more: Explainer: what is thunderstorm asthma?

Relievers and preventers

Relievers are bronchodilators, meaning they act rapidly to relax the muscle in the airways and open the breathing passages to enable normal breathing.

Salbutamol (Ventolin or Asmol) is by far the best known and widely used, typically as an aerosol inhaler (often referred to as a puffer).

Preventers include Breo, Symbicort, Flutiform, Seretide and Flixotide.

The most commonly used preventer asthma medications in Australia contain an inhaled corticosteroid (which is anti-inflammatory) and a long-acting bronchodilator, which is a symptom controller – an ideal combination.

Proper preventer use may result in so few symptoms you might not need to take reliever medications for many weeks or even months.

People who are prescribed regular asthma preventer medications should continue to take them throughout the COVID-19 season to maximise their chances of staying well. Stopping these medications may increase the risk of having poorly controlled asthma and risk a severe attack or even hospital admission.

Stop panic-buying medications

Sadly, there has been a recent run on the reliever salbutamol in Australian pharmacies. While it’s vital people check the expiry date on their salbutamol canister, there is no need to stockpile these inhalers.

The less we panic-buy, the more likely there will be plenty of salbutamol available for those who need it.

Stay healthy, minimise the risk

To minimise your risk of a flare-up with any respiratory virus, including coronavirus, you should:

1. take your preventer medication every day as prescribed
2. make sure you know where your salbutamol inhaler is and that it hasn’t expired
3. check in with your doctor to make sure your asthma control is as good as it can be, and that your current medications and doses are appropriate
4. make sure you have an up to date written asthma action plan, and keep it handy
5. remember to have your flu shot.

Written action plans mean you can step up your treatment if symptoms worsen. They provide guidance about when to start additional treatments such as a course of the anti-inflammatory corticosteroid prednisone or when to contact a doctor.

Your GP can help you recognise early symptoms of an asthma attack or flare-up, write a new plan and discuss the best way manage your attacks so you know exactly what to do if your symptoms increase.

Your action plan should include advice to use a puffer and spacer during a flare-up of asthma, but not a nebuliser.

During the first SARS epidemic in 2003, health-care workers reportedly became ill due to exposure to aerosol-producing procedures such as nebulising bronchodilator medications.

We know that SARS CoV-2, the current pandemic virus, can spread rapidly this way and so nebulisers should not be used to treat asthma attacks at home or in hospital.

Good asthma control maximises the chances that if you do get coronavirus, it will have minimal impact. It doesn’t, however, remove the risk of a serious episode completely.

Patients, families and carers can get more information at Asthma Australia and health professionals can go to the National Asthma Council.

If your usual asthma medications are not working for you, seek medical advice promptly. Meanwhile, keep doing all you can to reduce your risk of catching coronavirus in the first place by social distancing and washing hands frequently.

Read more: What causes asthma? What we know, don’t know and suspect

– ref. I’m an asthmatic: what should I do during the coronavirus pandemic? – https://theconversation.com/im-an-asthmatic-what-should-i-do-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-135309