Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Halafoff, Associate Professor in Sociology, Deakin University

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced religious congregations to stay at home after the doors have been closed to their churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and gurdwaras across Australia.

But religious life has not stopped. Congregations are discovering new ways to meet virtually on plenty of online video platforms.

Google searches for the word “prayer” have skyrocketed in recent months, apparently in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, for one, said his “prayer knees were getting a good workout” as he prayed for the nation and for religious communities facing the closure of sacred meeting spaces due to the pandemic.

Read more: Pray, but stay away: holding on to faith in the time of coronavirus

And it is not just traditional religious communities that are coming together in virtual assembly.

Spiritual and therapeutic activities, such as yoga, meditation, martial arts and conscious dance classes, are also moving online for those Australians, particularly younger people, who identify as spiritual but not religious.

A global meditation, for example, was held earlier this month via YouTube to send healing and love to those struggling to cope during the pandemic. Some yoga studios have even offered classes for free or via donation, challenging popular assumptions about links between spirituality and consumerism.

The resilience of these groups in the face of adversity backs up the argument of scholars such as Boston University sociologist Nancy T. Ammerman, who argue the spiritual and religious are not so distinct from one another as popular opinion would have us believe.

Religious and spiritual practices deliver something special when they are done socially – a deep sense of community and connection with something larger than ourselves.

A time to pray online

All religions are dependent on their cultural contexts. Throughout history, they have adapted to changed circumstances and new technology. This current move to embrace live-streaming and video-conferencing is no different.

In fact, in this rapidly developing crisis, religious leaders have at times been ahead of political leaders.

Read more: Thinking like a Buddhist about coronavirus can calm the mind and help us focus

For example, while leaders in the UK were debating whether to embrace a “herd immunity” strategy for the country, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, made the call to cancel in-person church services and move to live-streaming instead.

Mega-churches in Australia, such as Hillsong and Gracepoint, have also transitioned to live-streaming their services with relative ease.

Many other faiths are doing the same. The Buddhist Society of Victoria has been live-streaming its Sunday talks for several years now and has recently shifted its guided meditations online.

The East Melbourne Synagogue has similarly made its Monday lunchtime Jewish classes virtual, while many Hindu temples, such as Melbourne’s Durga and International Society for Krishna Consciousness, have moved their weekly assemblies online.

Read more: Coronavirus: how new restrictions on religious liberty vary across Europe

Islamic leaders, meanwhile, have urged Muslims to stay home for the holy month of Ramadan, which began on Thursday, instead of breaking their fast in large gatherings in the evenings, as is customary.

For the 600,000 Muslims in Australia – as well as the hundreds of millions worldwide – this coming month will be very challenging.

The grand mufti of Australia has been offering weekly lessons following the Friday prayer since the start of the pandemic. These lessons will be expanded during Ramadan.

However, the Eid al-Fitr celebration at the end of Ramadan in late May will be a more muted affair. Normally, millions return to home towns and villages to celebrate with family, but none of this rich communal activity will be possible during the pandemic.

Not the same personal touch

While these technological changes have shown promise in meeting people’s more immediate spiritual concerns, months of self-isolation, rising unemployment and mounting death tolls will surely present fresh challenges.

Especially worrying is the fact religious groups have long assisted newly arrived immigrants to settle in Australia. With many international students and people on temporary work visas struggling to find work and affordable housing during the pandemic, online community outreach by religious groups will likely not be enough.

Some religious groups and individuals are still helping the most needy in person, abiding by social-distancing measures. Father Bob Maguire’s Community Pantry Warehouse in Melbourne, for instance, is still offering food packages, though its community meals in parks have been temporarily suspended.

Read more: Are you there God? Whether we pray harder or endure wrath depends on the religious doctrine of Providence

And what about death and dying, of having to bid farewell online, and not being able to honour loved ones in funeral rites? The lack of these rituals, which bring people together, will surely affect the process of grieving.

Being able to leverage the digital domain to connect virtually is a great blessing in this crisis. But it is difficult to replace in-person human connection when we are at our most vulnerable.

Once we get through this, Australia’s rich religious and spiritual landscape will be awash again with colourful celebrations affirming the sanctity of real-world connection and community.

Nonetheless, some things will be forever changed by the crisis. And the new skills and online practices learned at this time will impact the ways Australians engage with the religious and spiritual into the future.

– ref. Religious groups are embracing technology during the lockdown, but can it replace human connection? – https://theconversation.com/religious-groups-are-embracing-technology-during-the-lockdown-but-can-it-replace-human-connection-135682

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Potter, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney

Spoiler alert: this story describes a pivotal film scene that is designed to surprise the viewer.

LGBTQ films tend to provoke debates about authenticity, especially when it comes to sex: should it be represented explicitly or not? Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), the latest award-winning film from French director-screenwriter Céline Sciamma, refuses to choose, offering instead a funny and sophisticated response to the politics of lesbian representation. The film has just been released on disc and digital for enjoying in the privacy of lockdown.

Sciamma has a reputation for making films that encourage audiences to think differently about desire. Her first three films, Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011) and Girlhood (2014), avoid triumphant coming out narratives. Instead, each follows the tentative and ambivalent experiences of their young queer protagonists as they negotiate hostile heteronormative worlds.

Sciamma’s latest film turns from adolescent coming-of-age drama to adult lesbian romance. Set in 18th-century France, Portrait of a Lady on Fire centres on the painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and the reluctant portrait subject with whom she falls in love. Resisting an arranged marriage, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) refuses to pose for a painting for her future husband. Marianne is hired ostensibly to be a walking companion, but really to observe Héloïse and paint her in secret.

Across scenes of Marianne glancing surreptitiously at her subject, the film establishes a story of desire. Héloïse’s reciprocal gazes are freighted with homoerotic meaning.

The code

Sciamma’s indirect representations of lesbian desire owe much to the history of classical Hollywood cinema.

When the industry banned explicit representations of sex and so-called sex perversion under the auspices of the Production Code, filmmakers responded by developing a sophisticated system for representing desire and sex. A glance, gesture, line of dialogue or object could be coded with sexual meaning. Because it was “only” implicit or indirect, that meaning could be readily denied by Hollywood studios under pressure to offer wholesome entertainment.

The underground gay film A Song of Love (Jean Genet, France, 1950) exploits this representational history in a well-loved erotic scene in which a cigarette, and a thread of smoke, stand in for something else.

The legacy of classical Hollywood cinema is not over, but the stakes have changed. Now the question is not whether a mainstream film will make queer romance visible, but whether it will include queer sex.

Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) outraged some lesbian critics for scenes regarded as too explicit and objectifying. On the other hand, Luca Guadagnino’s decision in Call Me By Your Name (2017) to coyly pan to an open window rather than show sex was castigated by influential critic D. A. Miller.

Now you see it, now you don’t

Sciamma has been criticised for not being brave enough to include an explicit sex scene in her film. But the filmmaker insists “there is a sex scene … maybe you haven’t seen it”.

As the lovers lie in bed together, Hélöise proposes to Marianne they try a tincture of psychedelic herbs that promises to stop time. With an arm stretched upward, Hélöise takes some ointment and smears it along her armpit. The film then cuts abruptly to a close-up image of penetration. It’s puzzling at first, but as the camera drifts, we realise its source: Marianne’s finger held close under Hélöise’s armpit.

This visual joke plays on our desires to see sex, desires shaped in part by film style and genre.

One of the conventions of lesbian film romance, exemplified by the cult classic Claire of the Moon (1992), is that audiences will spend the entire film suspended in anticipation, waiting for the climactic sex scene and its combined narrative and sexual release. In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the image of sex arrives so suddenly in the scene and too soon in the story, it breaks with generic norms.

On one level, the image is a knowing gesture to classical Hollywood cinema imagery. Seemingly innocent body parts have a double meaning. Yet this image of sex goes further. Rather than evoking the raunchy sex scene of contemporary lesbian romance, it mimics the real sex scenes (both hetero and homo) popular in arthouse films since the 1990s.

Real, unsimulated sex scenes, typically organised around erection, penetration and orgasm, try to make sexual intimacy not only visible but authentic.

Instead of trying to guarantee the authenticity of her love scene in a similar way, Sciamma playfully draws attention to the convention itself, and the sexual identities and ideologies it tries to sustain. To refuse to see Sciamma’s scene as a real sex scene is to go along with dominant culture’s blind spots about sex: that it only happens in genitally focused zones of the body, that it always involves penetration of an orifice, and that it must culminate in orgasm.

Sciamma recognises and responds to these issues by veering in another direction. The scene interrupts the flow of our expectations to make visible a sex act that opens out to alternative erotic pleasures.

Sciamma’s film draws attention to cinematic conventions to upend what counts as sex. In a brief, startling, and exquisitely erotic moment, Portrait of a Lady on Fire plays with how we see (and think we see) sex between women.

– ref. Where there’s smoke: seeing sex in Portrait of a Lady on Fire – https://theconversation.com/where-theres-smoke-seeing-sex-in-portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-132184

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

As Australia begins gradually to relax some of its containment measures (so-called nonpharmaceutical interventions or NPIs) we are confronted with a number of questions

• when will children be back at school full time?

• when might restaurants and pubs be open and will the public continue to respect social-distancing rules when they do?

• do we have adequate testing and contact tracing to extinguish flare-ups in infections without reverting to harsher containment measures?

And more. They are hard and important questions.

But another one being asked is surprising: do lockdowns work?

The question has underpinned the position of lockdown sceptics such as Henry Ergas writing in the Australian and Christopher Joye,

The Australian’s Adam Creighton gave explicit voice to the question this week, writing that our excellent performance in keeping COVID-19 at bay had blinded some to the lack of evidence for lockdown restrictions

The human desire for ritual, and our laudable want to do the right thing, appear to underpin social distancing restrictions more than science.

It is odd that anyone should be seriously asking this question, and it is important to understand that the evidence most certainly does suggest that lockdowns work.

If we fail to accept it, our response to a second-wave outbreak, or to the next global pandemic, will be badly compromised.

It is also important to consider what constitutes “good evidence” when high-stakes decisions need to be made quickly.

The evidence is fairly clear

The gold standard is high quality evidence from randomised controlled trials subjected to peer review, but in emergencies there’s no time to wait for it.

It allows sceptics to point to uncertainly and cherry-pick low-quality evidence that supports their case.

As it happens, the cross-country evidence is fairly clear. Countries that locked down earlier have had better health outcomes, as the following chart from the Financial Times shows.

We don’t yet have the final word on this crisis, so it is also worth looking back to an earlier pandemic.

A 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined what happened in 43 United States cities during the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic.

It found measures such as school closures and bans on public gatherings were (statistically significantly) associated with fewer excess deaths.

Cities that implemented NPIs earlier had lower peak mortality rates and lower total mortality. Also the cities that kept the NPIs in place the longest had the lowest mortality.

As the authors put it,

these findings demonstrate a strong association between early, sustained, and layered application of nonpharmaceutical interventions and mitigating the consequences of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in the United States

A more recent study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Federal Reserve finds the cities that adopted the most aggressive social distancing measures had the highest economic growth after the restrictions were lifted.

Moreover, cities that implemented NPIs 10 days earlier than other cities increased their manufacturing employment by 5% more than those that imposed restrictions later. The difference lasted through to 1923.

Overall they found an additional 50 days of social-distancing was associated with a 6.5% percent increase in manufacturing employment.

Sure, it’s not gold standard

As his evidence that there was no evidence to support the measures Australia had taken, Creighton cited a World Health Organisation report that summarised a number of studies of previous pandemics.

In fact, the World Health Organisation report said two things.

One was that randomised controlled trials are the best, but that they are not always possible or available.

No surprises there.

The second was in the form of a series of recommendations, based on the evidence it assessed.

In summary, the World Health Organisation looked at the evidence and recommended social distancing measures to avoid crowding, school and workplace closures, and internal travel restrictions.

Read more: COVID lockdowns have human costs as well as benefits. It’s time to consider both

It is true that at that stage it recommended against border closures, but if Creighton or his newspaper want to defend the docking of the Ruby Princess on March 19 on the basis of the report, they can go ahead.

In a crisis, evidence is never gold standard

In a crisis, decision makers don’t have the luxury of time. They have to act based on the best evidence they have.

Even if that evidence falls short of perfectly identified causal effects, it deserves to be interpreted in a scientific and dispassionate way.

Or to paraphrase the late US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “commentators are entitled to their own opinions but not to a wilful and purposeful misinterpretation of the facts”.

Those who misinterpret the evidence there is have COVID-19 on their hands.

– ref. Vital Signs. The evidence that lockdowns work may not be gold standard, but it’s good – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-the-evidence-that-lockdowns-work-may-not-be-gold-standard-but-its-good-137540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Maguire, Associate Professor in Human Rights and International Law, University of Newcastle

Debates about a return to classroom learning in Australia are fraught, and parents have mixed feelings as to what may be best for their children.

This confusion is likely influenced by a sense of mixed messages from different approaches around the country.

For example, term 2 began this week in New South Wales. From week 3, children in government schools have been allocated a day per week when they should learn on site. In Western Australia, parents have been asked to decide if their children will return to the classroom, learn online from home or learn from home with hard copy materials. The situation in both states is to be reviewed around week 3.

In contrast, all Victorian students who can learn from home must do so. The ACT is also proceeding with online learning for all children who can be supervised at home.

Human rights relevant to schooling

Australia lacks a comprehensive human rights framework, although human rights laws have been passed in the ACT, Victoria and Queensland. Little commentary to date has considered the return to school in a human rights context.

Human rights are interconnected values. Many are relevant to this issue and the pandemic more broadly.

Under international law, all people have the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The right to health extends beyond access to health care. Importantly in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, it includes a right to the prevention, treatment and control of disease.

All people, and particularly children, also have a right to education. This right is described as essential for people to participate effectively in a free society. Countries are obliged to protect the right by ensuring, at a minimum, free and compulsory primary education and a system of schools to provide equitable access to education at each level.

International law also confirms the right of all people not only to work, but to enjoy just and favourable conditions of work. This includes a right to safe and healthy working conditions.

Human rights issues arising from a return to the classroom

How can we balance human rights implications of a return to classroom learning, when rights may come into tension with each other?

Most human rights can be constrained, although not to the point where their essence is denied. Limitations on rights must be necessary in response to a pressing public or social need. They must also pursue a legitimate aim and be proportionate to that aim.

When we consider rights in tension at this time, it is clear a right to health must be the primary focus. A weakening of protective measures may heighten the risk of a second wave of the virus.

A return to classroom learning should be made in consideration of the rights of both staff and children to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health. Australian parents and school staff are being encouraged to view schools as safe environments.

However, the advice for those who are at risk continues to be to stay at home. While some jurisdictions are moving to require in-person attendance, little has been said about how at-risk staff and students are to be protected at school or supported to continue in isolation.

Aspects of a return to school also pose mental health risks. Some students who require set daily routines may become anxious when required to attend only one day per week. Others, especially high school students in their final year, should perhaps be prioritised to return as a cohort in order to complete their education.

For teachers, there are significant workload implications in managing both in-class and online cohorts of students. The right of teachers to enjoy good mental health may also be compromised by a sense of risk in the return to classroom teaching. The potential for stress-related illnesses is obvious among parents, many of whom have found learning from home taxing on their mental health.

There is a widespread desire to support the right of students to education. Schools in Australia have mostly remained open throughout the peak of the crisis for children of essential workers and children who are safer at school than at home. This approach was a measured means of balancing rights to health and education and could be maintained for a longer period across the country.

It has been argued here that the “staggered” return to school in some states ought to prioritise the needs of children at certain key stages of learning.

We add that the most vulnerable children should also be prioritised. For example, greater equity in access to education at this time may call for special arrangements to include students with disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health conditions. Students who lack at-home access to online learning could also be prioritised in a return to the classroom.

The physical environment in schools is a further complicating factor, particularly in terms of teachers’ rights to safe conditions of work. The prime minister is adamant schools are exempt from social-distancing requirements. Yet those states returning students to the classroom are implicitly undermining that message by setting maximum numbers and requiring staggered break times and other measures.

Many teachers feel confused and stressed about how they can do their work safely. This is unsurprising, given some states and other countries are taking much more cautious approaches to the health and safety of school staff.

No magic right answer

The balancing process between human rights values at this time is highly complex and beyond what we can hope to resolve in this article. And human rights analyses cannot deliver us a simple “right” answer as to how the return to classroom learning should be managed.

What human rights give us is another frame through which to consider these fundamental challenges. There are obvious economic and educational imperatives to prompt a return to classroom learning. Our national debate could be richer and more inclusive if it also included human rights claims.

– ref. Sending children back to school during coronavirus has human rights implications – https://theconversation.com/sending-children-back-to-school-during-coronavirus-has-human-rights-implications-137251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Thurbon, Scientia Fellow and Associate Professor in International Relations / International Political Economy, UNSW

The chaos of COVID-19 has now hit global energy markets, creating an outcome unheard of in industrial history: negative oil prices. With the world’s largest economies largely in lockdown, demand for oil has stagnated.

Essentially, the negative prices mean oil producers are willing to pay for the oil to be taken off their hands because soon, they will have nowhere to store it.

Federal energy minister Angus Taylor has proposed a partial solution: Australia will spend A$94 million buying up oil, to bolster domestic supplies and help stabilise global prices.

That strategy is a fool’s path to energy security. Right now, the best way to shore up Australia’s future energy supplies is to invest economic stimulus money in renewables – essentially to manufacture our own energy security.

A flawed plan

Australia’s oil reserves have for years languished well below the International Energy Agency’s recommended 90 days. Taylor says his plan would address this, and help stabilise (read: push up) oil prices and restore faith in the global oil market on which Australia depends.

But the plan is undermined by a simple fact: unstable global oil prices have been a recurring problem for decades, largely for political reasons well beyond Australia’s control. We need look only to the price shocks triggered by the Yom-Kippur war of 1973, the Iraq war of 2003, and the Saudi drone attack of 2019 – to name just a few.

Read more: Making Australia a renewable energy exporting superpower

Price instability is all but guaranteed to increase in future, as climate change concerns drive insurers and investors away from fossil fuels and towards green energy.

The current chaos actually creates a much better opportunity for Australia: use the massive COVID-19 economic stimulus to manufacture real energy security in the form of renewables.

Renewables: a win-win

The price and supply of energy from fossil fuels is vulnerable to natural resource depletion, geopolitical tensions and climate change concerns. This is true not just for oil, but coal and gas too.

The only real path to energy security is manufactured energy such as solar panels, wind turbines, electrolysers, batteries and smart grids.

These technologies can turn infinite natural resources into energy, then store and distribute it to ensure stable supply.

Victoria and South Australia now enjoy higher levels of energy security thanks to large-scale stationary batteries that even out electricity peaks and troughs.

Read more: It might sound ‘batshit insane’ but Australia could soon export sunshine to Asia via a 3,800km cable

For example, a large-scale battery in Victoria stores energy produced by the Gannawarra solar farm. The battery provides energy during peak times when there is no sun.

Manufacturing energy is also important from an economic security perspective, promoting the creation of high-tech, high-wage industries.

These industries can create thousands of skilled jobs and open up massive new export markets – all while helping to mitigate climate change. This reality has been accepted by major East Asian economies, including China to South Korea, for more than a decade.

The Australian government must use its enormous stimulus to help local companies dramatically expand their wind, solar, hydrogen and energy storage investments. This would satisfy domestic energy needs and grow the new green export markets ready and waiting in Asia.

A jobs boon

There is no shortage of projects waiting to be turbocharged. The government could start with Sun Cable, linking Australia’s and Singapore’s clean energy markets via an undersea cable.

It could also kickstart Australia’s clean hydrogen industry. According to the government’s own National Hydrogen Strategy, developing hydrogen would dramatically reduce Australia’s oil import reliance and energy costs and vastly expand its clean energy exports.

By simply following its own strategy, the government could create about 7,600 skilled and semi-skilled jobs and add about A$11 billion each year to Australia’s gross domestic product to 2050.

Read more: Australia could fall apart under climate change. But there’s a way to avoid it

The cheaper energy prices that follow could help Australia revive its techno-industrial base by making energy-intensive manufacturing a viable proposition once again.

According to leading economist Ross Garnaut, Australia could then bring home its long-lost materials-processing industries and re-emerge as a world-leading exporter of (clean) steel and aluminium.

Geopolitical benefits would also flow from Australia becoming a green hydrogen superpower, such as reducing our worrying export dependence on China.

Seize the moment

The idea of using the COVID-19 stimulus to turbocharge Australia’s clean energy shift is not pie in the sky. Indeed, doing so is the explicit recommendation of the International Energy Agency, which this week noted:

These huge spending programmes are likely to be once-in-a-generation in scale and will shape countries’ infrastructure for decades to come… Governments can … achieve both short-term economic gains and long-term benefits by making clean energy part of their stimulus plans.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly been disastrous for Australia and the world. But it creates new opportunities in energy, economic security and climate action. To seize these opportunities, the Morrison government must chart a new industrial course for the nation by manufacturing Australia’s energy security.

– ref. Want an economic tonic, Mr Morrison? Use that stimulus money to turbocharge renewables – https://theconversation.com/want-an-economic-tonic-mr-morrison-use-that-stimulus-money-to-turbocharge-renewables-137074

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tan Yigitcanlar, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Queensland University of Technology

Australia has borne the brunt of several major disasters in recent years, including drought, bushfires, floods and cyclones. The increasing use of social media is changing how we prepare for and respond to these disasters. Not only emergency services but also their social media are now much-sought-after sources of disaster information and warnings.

We studied Australian emergency services’ social media use in times of disaster. Social media can provide invaluable and time-critical information to both emergency services and communities at risk. But we also found problems.

Read more: Drought, fire and flood: how outer urban areas can manage the emergency while reducing future risks

How do emergency services use social media?

The 2019-20 Australian bushfires affected 80% of the population directly or indirectly. Social media were widely used to spread awareness of the bushfire disaster and to raise funds – albeit sometimes controversially – to help people in need.

The escalating use and importance of social media in disaster management raises an important question:

How effective are social media pages of Australian state emergency management organisations in meeting community expectations and needs?

To answer this question, QUT’s Urban Studies Lab investigated the community engagement approaches of social media pages maintained by various Australian emergency services. We placed Facebook and Twitter pages of New South Wales State Emergency Services (NSW-SES), Victoria State Emergency Services (VIC-SES) and Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QLD-FES) under the microscope.

Our study made four key findings.

First, emergency services’ social media pages are intended to:

• disseminate warnings
• provide an alternative communication channel
• receive rescue and recovery requests
• collect information about the public’s experiences
• raise disaster awareness
• build collective intelligence
• encourage volunteerism
• express gratitude to emergency service staff and volunteers
• raise funds for those in need.

Read more: With costs approaching $100 billion, the fires are Australia’s costliest natural disaster

Examples of emergency services’ social media posts are shown below.

Second, Facebook pages of emergency services attract more community attention than Twitter pages. Services need to make their Twitter pages more attractive as, unlike Facebook, Twitter allows streamlined data download for social media analytics. A widely used Twitter page of emergency service means more data for analysis and potentially more accurate policies and actions.

Third, Australia lacks a legal framework for the use of social media in emergency service operations. Developing these frameworks will help organisations maximise its use, especially in the case of financial matters such as donations.

Fourth, the credibility of public-generated information can sometimes be questionable. Authorities need to be able to respond rapidly to such information to avoid the spread of misinformation or “fake news” on social media.

Services could do more with social media

Our research highlighted that emergency services could use social media more effectively. We do not see these services analysing social media data to inform their activities before, during and after disasters.

In another study on the use of social media analytics for disaster management, we developed a novel approach to show how emergency services can identify disaster-affected areas using real-time social media data. For that study, we collected Twitter data with location information on the 2010-11 Queensland floods. We were able to identify disaster severity by analysing the emotional or sentiment values of tweets.

Read more: Explainer: how the internet knows if you’re happy or sad

This work generated the disaster severity map show below. The map is over 90% accurate to actual figures in the report of the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry.

Concerns about using social media to manage disaster

The first highly voiced concern about social media use in disaster management is the digital divide. While the issue of underrepresented people and communities remains important, the use of technology is spreading widely. There were 3.4 billion social media users worldwide in 2019, and the growth in numbers is accelerating.

Read more: Online tools can help people in disasters, but do they represent everyone?

Besides, many Australian cities and towns are investing in smart city strategies and infrastructures. These localities provide free public Wi-Fi connections. And almost 90% of Australians now own a smart phone.

The second concern is information accuracy or “fake news” on social media. Evidently, sharing false information and rumours compromises the information social media provides. Social media images and videos tagged with location information can provide more reliable, eye-witness information.

Another concern is difficulty in receiving social media messages from severely affected areas. For instance, the disaster might have brought down internet or 4G/5G coverage, or people might have been evacuated from areas at risk. This might lead to limited social media posts from the actual disaster zone, with increasing numbers of posts from the places people are relocated.

In such a scenario, alternative social media analytics are on offer. We can use content analysis and sentiment analysis to determine the disaster location and impact.

How to make the most of social media

Social media and its applications are generating new and innovative ways to manage disasters and reduce their impacts. These include:

• increasing community trust in emergency services by social media profiling
• crowd-sourcing the collection and sharing of disaster information
• creating awareness by incorporating gamification applications in social media
• using social media data to detect disaster intensity and hotspot locations
• running real-time data analytics.

In sum, social media could become a mainstream information provider for disaster management. The need is likely to become more pressing as human-induced climate change increases the severity and frequency of disasters.

Today, as we confront the COVID-19 pandemic, social media analytics are helping to ease its impacts. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are greatly reducing processing time for social media analytics. We believe the next-generation AI will enable us to undertake real-time social media analytics more accurately.

Read more: Coronavirus: How Twitter could more effectively ease its impact

– ref. Disasters expose gaps in emergency services’ social media use – https://theconversation.com/disasters-expose-gaps-in-emergency-services-social-media-use-134912

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hans Hendrischke, Professor of Chinese Business and Management, University of Sydney

Two events this week have illustrated two fundamental tensions in Australia’s relationship with China.

The first event was China’s ambassador to Australia suggesting a Chinese boycott of Australian exports, due to Australia pursuing an independent inquiry into the early response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

In an interview on April 27, ambassador Cheng Jingye said Chinese tourists and students might have second thoughts about a country “not so friendly, even hostile”.

“And also,” Cheng added, “maybe the ordinary people will think why they should drink Australian wine or eat Australian beef.”

Read more: China-Australia relations hit new low in spat over handling of coronavirus

The second event was the “blindsiding” of federal health minister Greg Hunt at press conference with mining magnate Andrew Forrest on April 29, when Forrest invited China’s consul-general for Victoria and Tasmania to speak.

The diplomatic kerfuffle wasn’t the most significant aspect. It was the point of the press conference: Forrest’s procurement through Chinese business contacts of 10 million coronavirus tests – increasing Australia’s testing capacity 20-fold.

These two events point to two fundamental realities about the economic relationship between China and Australia.

First, the two nations are deeply important to each other.

Second, this coronavirus pandemic has exposed the need to increase local manufacturing and reduce dependence on imports of critical supplies.

Australia’s recovery planning must include policies to underwrite local manufacturing capability. It means our economic relationship with China will change.

But despite the veiled threats from the Chinese government, and the desire in some parts of the Australian community for a split, a great economic decoupling is not an option.

Mutual dependence

Australia depends on exports to grow employment, tax revenue and welfare expenses.

About a quarter of all corporate tax revenue comes from mining. Most that is from exports to China, Australia’s largest trading partner by far. Coal and iron ore exports sales have been holding up well. Fortescue, in fact, expects to export more iron ore (177 million tonnes) this financial year.

There are no substitute markets of a similar scale to take up Australian exports in mineral resources, nor in agricultural produce or international education.

But China has few viable alternatives to Australia as well.

Read more: Australia depends less on Chinese trade than some might think

Certainly not in the supply of iron ore, gas and coal.

Not for agricultural produce, where Australia has high a reputation in China.

Nor for education. There are few English-speaking countries to begin with, and the biggest market for Chinese students, the United States, is looking decidedly more hostile and unsafe.

So our dependence is mutual. Decoupling won’t happen.

Onshoring on the agenda

But nor it is an option to return to the pre-COVID-19 status quo.

The model of Australia “being willing to export commodities and import finished goods is old and broken”, declared a member of the federal government’s new National COVID-19 Coordination Commission this week.

The commission was established last month to advise the government on “actions to anticipate and mitigate the economic and social effects of the global coronavirus pandemic”.

Liveris is a Darwin-born chemical engineer who rose to become chief executive of The Dow Chemical Company (now DowDupont, the world’s biggest chemical maker. Top of the agenda he signalled this week is “onshoring”. In other words, restoring local manufacturing capability.

“Australia drank the free-trade juice and decided that offshoring was OK. Well, that era is gone,” he said. “We’ve got to now realise we’ve got to really look at onshoring key capabilities.”

A new form of globalisation

There is a clear national interest in developing our own manufacturing in critical export industries such as health, cybertechnology, renewable energy and agribusiness.

Doing so will include Australia in a global trend to reduce reliance on one continent or one country.

Some might call this deglobalisation. It is not.

Diversifying production and bringing it closer to markets and consumers is simply a new form of globalisation.

To achieve it, Australian businessess will need to invest heavily in new technology to take advantage of digital manufacturing, automation and artificial intelligence.

Read more: A fourth industrial revolution is powering the rise of smart manufacturing

With the possible exception of some critically important services or products, only globally competitive manufacturing will be sustainable. It will need to be high-tech and innovative manufacturing. It will not mean the return of traditional manufacturing industries.

We’ll still need each other

Australia needs China to make this transition.

Advanced digital manufacturing requires substantial investment in technological capability and production facilities. China is already manufacturing and exporting advanced production equipment.

China will also be a crucial market for any exports, with many opportunities for Australian manufacturers that align with demand in the huge Chinese market. Chinese investment will help develop these export opportunities, as it has with exports like dairy.

Read more: Vital Signs: Why can’t Australia be friends with both US and China?

So neither Australia nor China stand to gain from decoupling the two economies. Our economic co-operation will change with onshoring. But mutual dependence will not.

– ref. Australia’s links with China must change, but decoupling is not an option – https://theconversation.com/australias-links-with-china-must-change-but-decoupling-is-not-an-option-137391

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Birch, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Victoria University

Following the death of her elderly father, a close friend of mine recently asked if I would read a poem by Goethe at his funeral.

I didn’t know the man well. In fact, I had met him only once, seated in my friend’s car on a Fitzroy street on a sunny day several years ago. What struck me about him at the time was the mischievous smile he wore and the youthful sparkle in his eyes. I felt honoured to be invited to share in the celebration of his life.

Although my friend is near a generation younger than me, we are very close. I have known her since she was a shy but determined young person. She has since become an advocate for the rights of Indigenous people in Australia and the South Pacific. She is thoughtful and kind and fierce whenever the situation requires a “warrior woman”.

The funeral service took place at a community hall in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne. Family and friends of the man who had passed spoke, sang and prayed (in their own way) about the remarkable life of a person who had survived the ravages of war-torn Europe, the loss of loved ones, separation from family and an eventual migration to Australia, where he fell in love, raised a family and continued his lifelong passion for the natural world.

Before I left home for the funeral service, my wife, Sara, asked me, “Will you be okay?” My younger brother had died suddenly only weeks earlier, and I remained grief-stricken by the experience of finding him in the small government flat where he’d lived for two decades. I answered Sara’s question with a dismissive, “I’ll be fine”.

Of stone

And I was fine. Following the death of a person you love dearly, a person you yearn to see just once more, a person you want to say just one more goodbye to, isolation can become a tempting companion. You feel that nobody understands the depth of your grief.

Appointments, work, conversations with friends – they all make little sense. Mundane tasks become even more meaningless. My retreat into self-imposed isolation had become debilitating. Attending a funeral in the mountains was, if nothing else, an escape from my solitary confinement.

A few hours later I found myself in a room crackling with the energy of those who had gathered, along with the man who had bought us together for the day, who was resting in a wicker coffin at the front of the room. As I read the poem for him and his family, I thought again about my own brother and felt comforted, for the first time in weeks, that I was not alone. I was sharing a valued life among the living.

Following the burial at a local cemetery, we were invited back to the community hall, where we enjoyed food and stories about the life of my friend’s father. I noticed a wooden table where a range of items had been placed: books, hand tools, photographs and other secondhand objects you might find at a garage sale. My friend took me over to the table and explained that each of the items had belonged to her father and held particular significance for him and his family. I was invited to choose an object and take it home with me as an act of commemoration. I hesitated. It didn’t seem right that I should take something personal belonging to a man I’d hardly known.

My friend gently nudged me. “Go on, pick something,” she said.

My eye was drawn to an egg-shaped, ivory-coloured stone, speckled with an earthy pigment. I picked up the stone. It sat full and heavy in the palm of my right hand. I turned it over. Its centre was smudged with a dark stain. It appeared that someone may have held the stone in their hand and rubbed it (and rubbed it) with the back of a thumb.

“Can I have this?” I asked my friend.

“Of course,” she answered. “It’s a good choice for you.”

The stone now sits on my writing desk. I often hold it in my hand when I’m thinking about the words I want to write (as I’m doing now). I have thought with the stone about life and death and my love for my friend, who misses her father so deeply. The stone has affected my thoughts on climate justice, which is a key area of my academic and community research.

What I have come to understand about the stone is that it is stronger than me – and you. It is also patient and thoughtful to an extent that human society appears to be incapable of. If we manage to destroy ourselves in the future, and destroy non-human species and vital ecological systems in the process, it will be because we don’t possess the humility and wisdom of the stone. Unfortunately, many in positions of power and influence appear most ill-equipped to recognise this. The stone has invited me to reflect on love, and on death, including my own. The stone also reminds me that seemingly inanimate and soulless objects have guided me throughout my life, particularly when I am reaching for understanding.

Foraging

If I wasn’t born to forage, I was taught to from a very young age. Growing up in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy in the early 1960s, we were very poor. (As poor as a Monty Python shoebox.) We were always a gleaning family, out of necessity. The open fire in our two-room terrace was fed with scraps of wood we gathered from the streets, empty houses and vacant blocks.

Coming home from school of an afternoon, if my older sister and I spotted an eight-foot long plank of wood, we’d pick it up, cart it home and add it to the woodpile in the yard. My brother and I collected scrap metal – lead, copper and brass – and sold it to a dealer who had a yard behind a pub on Brunswick Street.

I later came to cherish the narrative power of found objects through my grandmother, Alma, who introduced me to op shop fever, an ailment I continue to live with 60 years later. From the age of around four or five, hand-in-hand with my Nan, I’d walk from Fitzroy to the Salvation Army’s “Anchorage” in Abbotsford, around a mile and half in the imperial measurement of the time. The Salvos’ secondhand business could not be described as a “shop” or “store”, but a series of rusting corrugated-iron sheds on the bank of the Birrarung.

Each shed was dedicated to particular items: ornaments, household furniture, books and comics, and children’s clothing. Nan and I would move from shed to shed, with the rule that I could buy one book, one comic and one item of clothing. She liked to spend her time in the ornaments shed, searching for a vase, or a gravy dish perhaps, that she could add to the mirror-backed, glass-fronted cabinet in the front room of her Fitzroy house. Once an item went into the cabinet, it stayed there, never used and rarely touched – any item put into the cabinet was for “show”.

I loved my books and comics, but most of all I sought out a t-shirt or jumper, especially a warm woollen jumper, largely for practical purposes. Winters in our house and on our street were cold. A jumper provided warmth. A jumper purchased secondhand was my jumper, not one that had been handed down to me by my older brother. And when I put a thick woollen jumper over my head as a small child, my body felt protected, emotionally and physically. Woollen jumpers became my security blanket, and that desire for fabric has never left me.

I have a cupboard full of woollen jumpers at home. Some have been collected from the op shops I continue to visit each week. Others, bought new, are quite expensive. Any time I become particularly anxious, or feel the desire for “comfort clothes”, I put on one of my jumpers. (Summer is not my favourite season.) Recently, while experiencing a near emotional collapse, a crafted woollen object rescued me.

In Booktown

I was in a Victorian country town on an autumn morning as a guest of the Clunes Booktown Festival, which I’d been invited to some months previously. My younger brother had died a few weeks before the festival. I had begun to write about him, as it was my only means of understanding, if at all, what I was experiencing. I have since written about his death several times, with each essay building on the previous one, including conscious repetition (which I am doing now). The essays focus on walking country, travelling and remembering, with my brother at my side. Perhaps I am not repeating myself, but rather engaging in the act of reiteration as a means of paying my respect to his life?

Immediately after my brother’s death I cancelled several commitments, took weeks away from work and spent as much time as I could with my grieving mother. I had simply forgotten to cancel Clunes and felt obliged to attend when I was reminded about the festival only days before it was to begin. I drove there with Sara.

Clunes is a gold rush town in north-west Victoria and proudly carries the title of Booktown. On arrival, we parked the car alongside a bluestone church above the town. It was a cool and clear morning. Walking down the hill towards the festival, I suffered what I could only explain as an anxiety attack. I needed to sit down. I enjoy writing-and-reading festivals and I love the warmth of audiences. But, sitting on a bench in the main street of Clunes, I suddenly realised that I would be incapable of performing at all. I wanted to go home and hide. Sara suggested that a coffee might pick me up, although she was also ready to leave and drive me home if that was what I decided.

We went for a walk and I bought a café latte, an object of right-wing disdain. I took a sip and felt a little better. We spotted a craft stall selling woollen products: scarves, gloves and beanies. My eye was drawn to a naturally dyed beanie, chocolate and (sort of) aqua coloured, with a chocolate pompom on top. I picked the beanie up and held it in my hands. The wool was soft, the texture rich. With the permission of the woman standing behind the stall, I put the beanie on. It wrapped itself gently around my head. Feeling immediately comforted and secure, I smiled at Sara and said, “Let’s go.” We walked back up the hill, into the Clunes Town Hall, where we were met by a room crowded with generous people.

Gathering through the years

As we grow older, some of us begin to dispose of our possessions. Others continue to hoard. Thinking back to the table of objects at the funeral I attended, I experienced it as a generous and communal gesture, yet another act of reciprocity and energy.

My stone continues to teach me about the contrasts between humility and arrogance, between the world we are wilfully attacking and our self-destructive stupidity. The stone has also sharply focused my attention on the deep value of my relationships with other people. My friend who lost her father has been in a state of grief since his passing. When I hold the stone, or glance at it sitting on my desk, I think of my friend and I am reminded that she is in my care, as I am in hers. The thought strengthens me and gently reminds me to remain aware of my obligation to her. For this, I can thank the stone and the man who first picked it up and held it in his hand.

As I write this I am 62 years of age. (That’s old for an Aboriginal man!) I have five children, two grandchildren and a loving partner.

On July 4 1996, my grandmother, Alma, was in St Vincent’s Hospital in Fitzroy, dying of renal failure. Although I was a grown man, about to turn 40, I sat by the window of her room on the tenth floor, a child again, looking over the streets of our shared life. She passed away that night. My mother decided that our first task after her death was to empty out her Housing Commission flat and scrub it clean.

My grandmother’s flat was crowded with the objects she’d collected from op shops over 60 years. The family gathered at the door of my grandmother’s flat and my mother said, “Each of you pick something of love. The rest we pack up in boxes and drop at St Vincent de Paul’s in Collingwood”.

My initial thought was that it was reckless of my mother to sweep away Nan’s possessions so soon, and my older sister felt the same, whispering to me, “Shit. Nan’s not even cold yet”.

Our feelings shifted to acceptance, and subsequently deep satisfaction once each of us had chosen our love pieces. I picked a ceramic teapot mat, an ancient stone hot water bottle and a squat glass jar that my nan would fill with tomato sauce so that we could sit around her kitchen table and dip our hot chips into it.

A week later, I walked into the local op-shop and noticed a young woman pick up an orange flower vase that had belonged to my grandmother. She held it up admiringly. Light passed through the vase and the woman’s face glowed with happiness. She paid for the vase and took it home.

What’s left behind

When my brother died died last year, my two sisters performed the same ritual in his government flat. Whatever else might be said about a working-class Aboriginal-Irish family, we’re fucking spotlessly clean!

We took the goods we’d each decided to keep around the corner to my mother’s house. There were three guitars, two crucifixes and several books, including a copy of my short story collection Common People, which was sitting on the side table next to his bed on the morning I found him dead.

My sisters allowed me to take his acoustic guitar home as long as I promised that I would learn to play it. I walked home with the guitar under my arm, wondering what would happen to my own stuff when I died.

The books will continue to be treasured and read, I’m sure. I’m concerned for the bowls of collected pine cones scattered around the house.

My grandson, Archie, is 14 months old. Recently, I introduced him to the pine cones, naming them individually, hoping for attachment on his part. I took him on his first pine cone forage in Carlton Gardens. My motivation, of course, is that when I die and they come to sweep my life away, Archie will intervene, say, “Not so soon” and rescue my pine cones.

I don’t know what will happen to my woollen jumpers, scarves and beanies. If I was able to choreograph my own wake (as my mother has done in a lengthy list), or if this was a short story I was writing for you rather than nonfiction, I would die during a cold winter and my family would be gathered around a fire reminiscing about my life. My children, Erin, Siobhan, Drew, Grace and Nina, would each be wearing a “Tony Birch find” (as I refer to the jumpers); my grandkids, Isobel and Archie, would be each be wrapped in one of the many brightly coloured scarves I’ve collected; and Sara would be wearing the precious striped beanie that saved me on a beautiful morning in Clunes.

This is an edited extract republished with permission from GriffithReview68: Getting On (Text), ed Ashley Hay

– ref. Friday essay: grief and things of stone, wood and wool – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-grief-and-things-of-stone-wood-and-wool-136721

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Sivey, Associate Professor, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University

Australia is in an enviable position when compared with major world cities like New York, London and Madrid, each of which continues to deal with COVID-19 deaths in the thousands.

Although Australia has suffered 91 deaths, its daily rates of new cases are now in the low double figures or even single figures – evidence of very little community transmission in the country.

This means that unlike places that are still facing lockdown for weeks or months to come, Australia has some crucial imminent policy choices: how to balance the economic and social benefits of easing restrictions with the risks of a future spike in cases.

Read more: What might trigger a return to ‘normal’? Why our coronavirus exit strategy is … TBC

Roadmap to recovery

The Group of Eight, an affiliation of leading Australian research universities, this week published a major independent report describing a Roadmap to Recovery for the nation. It sets out some key policy choices, as well as a suite of recommendations to state and federal governments for the months ahead – specifically, beyond May 15, the extent of the federal government’s current restrictions.

The report invites the Australian government to choose between two contrasting but related strategies: “elimination” of COVID-19, and a “controlled adaptation strategy”.

Under the elimination scenario, Australia would continue its nationwide stay-home order (although restrictions currently vary between states) for two further weeks after daily cases reach zero. That means lockdown would last until the end of May or mid-June, given the current trends in cases. But beyond that many social distancing measures could be lifted relatively rapidly, due to minimal risk of community transmission. Travel restrictions would have to remain tight indefinitely, to prevent the possibility of reintroduction of the virus.

In the alternative, “controlled adaptation” strategy, the government would still use aggressive test-and-trace protocols to keep the number of new cases as low as possible. But lockdown restrictions would be lifted earlier – perhaps in the next couple of weeks – although the lifting would necessarily be gradual, with continued social distancing measures applied to shops, schools and workplaces.

Pros and cons

The advantages of elimination is that it prioritises Australians’ health while also affording a more rapid lifting of restrictions once it is deemed safe. For example, restaurants and cafes might perhaps return to serving sit-down customers once elimination has been achieved.

Controlled adaptation will involve more ongoing social distancing. Conceivably, even six months from now, shops and public transport might operate at restricted capacity so people aren’t crowded together. But the advantage of this approach may be in the long term: it prepares Australians for the fact that this virus will probably be circulating around the world for years, and we should adapt our behaviour accordingly.

Furthermore, with improved speed and availability of testing, an adaptation strategy would perhaps allow less stringent international travel restrictions later this year and into 2021. That would be a boon for Australia’s higher education industry, its immigration-dependent construction sector, and its (currently shrinking) overall population.

A ‘continuum’ of choice

Why does the report advocate two strategies, rather than backing just one? The report argues they are not distinct choices, but rather they lie “along a continuum” of strategic options.

So if the government opts to pursue elimination, it would still need to maintain testing and tracing capability in the longer term, as well as continuing to enforce some forms of social distancing even as other restrictions are lifted (for instance, it’s hard to imagine moshing at rock concerts being allowed anytime soon).

Conversely, pursuing a controlled adaptation strategy doesn’t mean Australia can’t also aim to bring cases to zero if possible, as many states are already recording zero cases for several days in a row.

The final exit from either strategy will involve a safe and effective vaccine. Neither allows for the growth of cases contemplated by other countries relying on immunity conferred by people infected with the virus.

Read more: 6 countries, 6 curves: how nations that moved fast against COVID-19 avoided disaster

Personally, I favour the end of the continuum that aims at controlled adaptation, rather than aiming for complete elimination of the virus in Australia. Elimination may prove elusive due to the long incubation period and high rate of asymptomatic cases of COVID-19.

But either way, it’s clearly important that cases are kept very low. While the disease disproportionately affects the old, people are still dying early and health economists have shown that an average of between 3 and 11 healthy life-years are still being lost per COVID-19 death.

The rapidly advancing scale and quality of testing and tracing capability should allow for the near-elimination of COVID-19 to continue with mild social distancing measures. Travel restrictions could be eased in the longer term as the pandemic (hopefully) wanes across the world.

Arguably most important of all is for the government to be agile in its approach to the crisis – to keep an eye on the situation both here and abroad, and react accordingly.

– ref. New roadmap gives Australia two paths out of COVID-19 lockdown: elimination or adaptation – https://theconversation.com/new-roadmap-gives-australia-two-paths-out-of-covid-19-lockdown-elimination-or-adaptation-137494

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karlheinz Peter, Lab Head, Atherothrombosis and Vascular Biology and Deputy Director, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute; Interventional Cardiologist, Alfred Hospital; Professor of Medicine and Immunology, Monash University, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute

As well as causing severe respiratory problems, there is mounting evidence COVID-19 causes abnormalities in blood clotting. Patients with severe COVID-19 infection appear to be at greater risk of developing blood clots in the veins and arteries.

Blood clots can occur deep in the veins of the leg (deep vein thrombosis) and can move to the lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism, which restricts blood flow and oxygen, and can be fatal.

Read more: Explainer: what is deep vein thrombosis?

Blood clots in arteries can cause heart attacks when they block blood supply to the heart, or strokes when they block oxygen supply to the brain.

So what is going on in the bodies of people with coronavirus? And what are clinicians doing to treat or prevent this complication?

What do these clots do?

Recent data from the Netherlands and France suggest that of the patients with coronavirus who are admitted to intensive care units (ICU), 30-70% develop blood clots in the deep veins of the legs, or in the lungs.

Around one in four coronavirus patients admitted to ICU will develop a pulmonary embolism.

These rates are much higher than we would usually see in patients requiring admission to ICU for reasons other than COVID-19.

Greater risk of stroke

Patients who present to hospital with COVID-19 are also more likely to have a stroke when compared with the general population.

Typically, the chance of having a stroke is associated with increasing age, as well as other risk factors such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, or smoking.

However, higher rates of strokes in patients with COVID-19 is somewhat unusual because it also seems to be happening in people under 50 years of age, with no other risk factors for stroke.

Low levels of oxygen

COVID-19 also appears to be associated with blood clots in the tiny blood vessels that are important for the transfer of oxygen in organs. Autopsy reports have shown elements of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, in cells lining these small blood vessels in the lungs, kidney, and gut.

This may result in tiny blood clots in these small blood vessels that disturb normal blood flow and the ability of the blood to deliver oxygen to these organs.

Read more: ICU ventilators: what they are, how they work and why it’s hard to make more

Importantly, these small blood clots could reduce normal lung function. If these small blood clots reach the lungs it may prevent oxygen getting into the blood as efficiently as normal. This may explain why patients with severe COVID-19 can have very low oxygen levels.

Treating and diagnosing clots is difficult

When patients are admitted to hospital, for coronavirus or any other condition that leaves them bed-bound, it is common practice to administer low-dose blood thinners to prevent the development of blood clots.

However, given that patients with COVID-19 seem to be at a higher risk of developing blood clots, it’s currently being debated whether higher doses of blood thinners are required to prevent these clotting complications.

Trials are underway to attempt to answer this important question.

Diagnosing these blood clots in patients with COVID-19 can also be particularly challenging.

Firstly, the symptoms of a worsening lung infection associated with the virus can be indistinguishable from the symptoms of a pulmonary embolism.

Another challenge in COVID-19 is that the virus can impact laboratory tests which may also be used to diagnose venous blood clots.

A good example of this is a test called D-dimer, which is a measure of clotting in the body. Normally, this test would be higher in almost everyone with new venous blood clots. However, people with severe COVID-19 infection can also have an elevated D-dimer simply due to the severe infection.

In some patients, this means that the test is no longer helpful to diagnose blood clots.

Why does COVID-19 cause blood clotting?

One theory is that the increased rate of blood clots in COVID-19 is simply a reflection of being particularly unwell and immobile.

However, the current data suggest the risk of blood clots is significantly greater in patients with COVID-19 than what is usually see in patients admitted to hospital and ICUs.

Another potential explanation is that the virus is directly impacting on the cells lining our blood vessels. When the body fights an infection, the immune system becomes activated to try and kill the invader, and research shows an activated immune system can cause blood clots.

In severe COVID-19, the immune system appears to go into overdrive. This could lead to the unchecked activation of cells that typically stop blood clotting.

Read more: Coronavirus ‘cytokine storm’: this over-active immune response could be behind some fatal cases of COVID-19

Another possibility is that the virus triggers blood clotting to provide it with a survival advantage.

The SARS virus, another member of the coronavirus family, can be further “activated” by a blood clotting protein, enabling the virus to more efficiently invade cells.

However, whether this is the case with COVID-19 remains to be investigated.

Intriguingly, preliminary research suggests that a commonly used blood thinner, heparin, may have antiviral effects by binding to SARS-CoV-2 and inhibiting a key protein the virus uses to latch onto cells.

What we know for sure is that blood-clotting complications are rapidly emerging as a significant threat from COVID-19. In this area, we still have much to learn about the virus, how it affects blood clotting, and the best options for prevention and treatment of these blood clots.

– ref. People with coronavirus are at risk of blood clots and strokes. Here’s what we know so far – https://theconversation.com/people-with-coronavirus-are-at-risk-of-blood-clots-and-strokes-heres-what-we-know-so-far-137304

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

It’s been the summer and autumn from hell for very many of the voters in the NSW federal seat of Eden-Monaro, a Labor electorate on under 1% that forms an envelope around the nation’s capital.

Fire ravaged their beautiful bush and coastal lands and claimed homes. Just as the rebuilding started, the coronavirus stopped the tourist industry climbing back to its feet.

There haven’t even been the usual dollars from the Canberrans who own holiday houses around the seaside areas. The strict travel ban has prevented them commuting for their weekends. Now the coming snow season looms as financially bleak.

Amid all the pain Eden-Monaro’s voters wouldn’t welcome a fractious byelection. But they’ll be understanding about what’s triggered it.

Their popular local member, Mike Kelly, has had his own months of hell, with multiple operations and medical procedures due to health issues arising from his military service in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, East Timor and Iraq.

As an emotional Kelly – who has respect across the political divide – told a news conference, he’s just not able any more to service a seat requiring much driving. He apologised to constituents for causing a byelection at this time.

Neither Anthony Albanese nor Scott Morrison would particularly want a test of strength right now. Byelections in marginal seats are unpredictable; a win can be gold, a loss a minor or major setback. Predictably, both leaders are trying to manage expectations down.

Morrison has had a personal polling boost from his handling of the virus crisis, although the Coalition and Labor remain neck and neck. Apart from narrow politics, his good ratings are coinage when the government has to make hard decisions, or appeal for community patience. He doesn’t want to lose any shine at the moment.

What if Labor holds the seat? That would suggest people aren’t translating their praise for the PM’s crisis management to wider endorsement of the government.

On the other hand, what if the ALP loses, when history is on its side? As everyone keeps saying, a government taking an opposition seat at a byelection last happened a century ago.

A loss would lead to soul searching in the ALP, reinforce the doubts held by Albanese’s critics, and make some in the party wonder if it did the right thing post-election, when he was endorsed without a contest. Remember, however, Labor rules now protect the leader to an extent (but only an extent), which they did not before 2013.

If the Liberals or Nationals won the seat, it would take Morrison’s majority from three to five (that’s including the speaker, who has a casting vote).

What if the victor was not a Liberal but NSW deputy premier John Barilaro, leader of the state Nationals, who appears set to run? Barilaro’s a fire cracker, with strong views and a loud voice.

His victory would mean the Liberals had lost out to their junior partner in a seat that’s a traditional Labor-Liberal battleground.

More important, Barilaro’s arrival in Canberra would unsettle deputy prime minister Michael McCormack. Barilaro wouldn’t take the gamble of seeking to switch parliaments if he didn’t have a lot of ambition.

Eden-Monaro is an electorate with a bit of everything, stretching from the regional centre of Queanbeyan, a dormatory for Canberra, through farming lands and mountains to the coast. From 1972 to 2013, it was hailed as a “bellwether”, going with the government of the day. Kelly, who held it from 2007-13, broke that link when he won it back in 2016.

As ABC electoral analyst Antony Green points out, as a bellwether, “it is a strangely unrepresentative seat. Outside of the ACT, Eden-Monaro has the nation’s highest proportion of residents employed by government, reflecting the large public service population in Queanbeyan, as well as a large number of residents serving in the military.”

Personal standing is important in this seat. Kelly has had a strong personal vote. Barilaro, who hold the state seat of Monaro, covering Queanbeyan, had 52% primary vote at the last NSW election, which shows his individual pull given the nature of the town is hardly usual Nationals’ heartland. In contrast, the Nationals polled 7% in Eden-Monaro in 2019.

Another well-known local, Andrew Constance, has been talked of for the Liberals. Constance, the NSW transport minister, holds the state seat of Bega; he was especially to the fore during the bushfires, when he was critical of Morrison’s performance.

Constance wouldn’t run if Barilaro does, and probably wouldn’t do so regardless. Constance’s house, for which he fought in the bushfires, is in the federal seat of Gilmore, and he’d be reluctant to move.

Also mentioned is Liberal senator Jim Molan. He’s a local, an ex-military man, and a skilled reaper of votes. But if he did become the Liberal candidate, it’s hard to see him being more attractive to potential Coalition voters than Barilaro.

Morrison this week flagged the Liberals would contest the seat and he expected a three-cornored context. But Barilaro on Thursday night argued strongly there should be only one candidate from the Coalition to maximise the government’s chances. “This is not the time for us to have an internal squabble,” he told Sky.

Another local with a profile, Kristy McBain, is touted as the Labor candidate. As mayor of Bega, she would start with good support in that part of the seat.

Questioned about issues, Kelly put climate change centre stage for Labor. More intense weather patterns and fires have given the climate issue a very practical face in Eden-Monaro. Labor will push the argument that with the virus, the government acts on the science – it should do the same on climate. Barilaro, though not a climate denier, attacked those who elevated the climate debate during the bushfires. He has focused on fuel reduction, and is a supporter of nuclear energy.

High on voters’ agendas will be jobs, reconstruction after the fires, and services. It’s a seat where the locals look for tangible results from their MPs, federal and state.

The virus will give a twist to campaigning. Albanese said he expects Speaker Tony Smith to announce the date of the byelection in the parliamentary week of 12-14 May. He anticipated it would be held late June.

How much the leaders will be able to get about the electorate physically is a moot point.

Morrison had an unhappy experience there in January, when he tried to shake some hands in Cobargo. “Well, he won’t have the handshake problem at the moment,” Albanese quipped on Thursday.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Can the government defy history and return Eden-Monaro to “bellwether” status? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-can-the-government-defy-history-and-return-eden-monaro-to-bellwether-status-137482

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nial Wheate, Associate Professor | Program Director, Undergraduate Pharmacy, University of Sydney

The race is on to find a drug that is both effective and safe for treating COVID-19, which has spread to 3.1 million infections and caused 220,000 deaths worldwide.

This week, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases released findings of a clinical trial of the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir. This showed COVID-19 patients recovered more quickly and had an improved survival rate when taking the drug, compared with those given a placebo and standard care.

But these are just the preliminary results of one study. Other human trials have not shown similar results. Further trials are under way and will more definitively show whether remdesivir is a suitable and effective treatment for COVID-19.

Read more: In the fight against coronavirus, antivirals are as important as a vaccine. Here’s where the science is up to

What is remdesivir?

Remdesivir is an experimental antiviral drug being developed by Gilead Sciences. Originally it was being developed as a treatment for Ebola, a viral infection that causes severe internal bleeding. But researchers are now interested in its potential to treat patients with COVID-19.

Remdesivir mimics a natural ingredient called adenosine of DNA and RNA, the latter being a molecule similar to DNA that is used to carry the genetic information of viruses. After the drug is activated in the body, it works by blocking a type of enzyme called a polymerase, which is needed to make DNA and RNA.

When you block the enzyme, the virus can’t make copies of itself, limiting the development of symptoms and spread of the disease.

It should be noted that no drug is perfectly safe, and remdesivir is no different. Studies undertaken so far suggest the drug may damage the liver and cause other short-term side effects such as nausea and vomiting.

These side effects need to be taken into consideration when treating COVID-19 patients who have other underlying conditions.

Clinical trials in US positive but only preliminary

This week the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) released the results of its trial using remdesivir for COVID-19 patients. They studied the effects of the drug on patients who were already infected with COVID-19 to see whether it helped them recover faster and improve their survival rate.

Adult patients hospitalised with COVID-19 were given daily injections of remdesivir. They were found to recover four days faster, an improvement of 31%, when compared with other patients who only received standard care and placebo.

Read more: Coronavirus treatments: what drugs might work against COVID-19?

The results also indicated that more patients survived the infection with remdesivir treatment, with the death rate dropping from 11.6% to 8%.

The results are significant enough that director of NIAID Anthony Fauci said it was an “ethical responsibility” for the remaining trial patients who were taking the placebo to be switched to the active drug.

But we need to treat the results of this trial with caution; for the moment they are only preliminary.

A data and safety panel has looked at the initial results, but they haven’t been peer-reviewed. During peer review, independent experts from the scientific community scrutinise the study design, methods, data produced, and the conclusions before the study is published in a medical journal.

How does it compare with other studies?

The results of other trials, such as one undertaken in China, have not shown the same promising results.

The Chinese study was published in the Lancet, considered one of the most influential medical journals in the world. This trial was a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study which means that neither the researchers nor the patients knew if they’d been given the active drug or a placebo.

These types of studies can reduce some biases that can influence studies, but also help quantify the effectiveness of the drug.

But the study also had limitations that need to be recognised. The patients were not as seriously ill as those in the NIAID trial, and the study was terminated early because the outbreak in China was easing.

In the end, the study only collected data on 237 patients, compared with 1,063 patients in the NIAID trial. The authors acknowledge further study is needed in more seriously ill patients and with a larger sample size.

Currently there are more than a dozen other clinical trials of remdesivir and COVID-19 being undertaken throughout the world. We need to await the data to know for sure whether the drug is as effective as we need it to be.

Read more: Head lice drug Ivermectin is being tested as a possible coronavirus treatment, but that’s no reason to buy it

– ref. Is remdesivir a miracle drug to cure coronavirus? Don’t get your hopes up yet – https://theconversation.com/is-remdesivir-a-miracle-drug-to-cure-coronavirus-dont-get-your-hopes-up-yet-137592

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Burgner, Clinician and Scientist, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Doctors in the United Kingdom and other European countries have recently reported small but increasing numbers of critically ill children with features of both Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome. These are uncommon conditions affecting the blood vessels.

England’s National Health Service (NHS) issued an alert to doctors as a result.

These children presented with fever, severe abdominal pain and/or a skin rash. Some also had inflammation of the coronary arteries which supply blood to the heart, and inflammation of the heart muscle itself.

Read more: Worried about your child getting coronavirus? Here’s what you need to know

Some, but not all, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19.

But what is Kawasaki disease, and how might these cases be related to COVID-19?

Kawasaki disease

Kawasaki disease is an uncommon disease of childhood, typically occurring between six months and five years. It occurs less frequently in older children and rarely in adults.

Initially described in Japan in 1967, it is most common in North East Asia but is seen worldwide. In Australia, on average, one child is diagnosed with Kawasaki disease every day.

Kawasaki disease is a vasculitis or inflammation of blood vessels, resulting from excessive immune activation. We don’t know what causes it and there’s no diagnostic test. Diagnosis is based on the clinical features, which include:

• prolonged fever
• rash
• red eyes
• swollen or red hands and feet
• sore, red or swollen lips or tongue
• a swollen lymph node in the neck.

The most serious complication of Kawasaki disease is damage to the coronary arteries, which in rare cases may be life-threatening. Timely treatment with a blood product containing purified immune proteins, called intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), reduces the risk of this complication from 25% to 5%.

Rarely, children with Kawasaki disease can present critically unwell with shock (low blood pressure) due to impaired heart muscle function – a serious condition called Kawasaki shock syndrome.

Kawasaki shock syndrome can resemble severe infection or toxic shock syndrome, a massive inflammatory response to toxins produced by certain bacteria. Toxic shock syndrome is also treated with IVIG, along with antibiotics.

While Kawasaki disease is generally an acute inflammatory disease and rarely recurs, patients who sustain more serious coronary artery damage may carry this with them through their lives. This may mean they have to take medications and are at higher risk of events like heart attacks.

Read more: Toxic shock syndrome is rare. Be vigilant but not alarmed

So what does Kawasaki disease have to do with COVID-19?

Recently reported clusters of children with an illness resembling Kawasaki shock syndrome have emerged from the UK and other European countries.

Some of these children diagnosed with Kawasaki disease are testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, leading clinicians to consider a link between coronavirus and Kawasaki disease or Kawasaki shock syndrome.

Paediatricians have been looking for the cause of Kawasaki disease for more than 50 years. Many features of Kawasaki disease point to one or more infectious triggers; suggested causes have included common bacteria, viruses, fungi, and even carpet shampoo.

And this isn’t the first time Kawasaki disease has been linked to a coronavirus. In 2005, researchers from Yale University isolated a novel coronavirus (New Haven coronavirus, HCoV-NH) from eight out of 11 children with Kawasaki disease. But these findings couldn’t be replicated in other groups of children with Kawasaki disease.

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

However tempting it might be to conclude COVID-19 may trigger Kawasaki disease, we should be cautious. There are as yet few details on the cases and not all children had positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 – nor all the features of Kawasaki shock syndrome. Many children are also older than is typical of Kawasaki disease.

Further, both Kawasaki disease and COVID-19 cause illness via excessive inflammation – particularly of blood vessels. And both diseases can progress to a state of overwhelming whole-body inflammation sometimes called a cytokine storm. So it might be difficult to differentiate one disease from the other in their most severe forms.

Another possible explanation could be COVID-19 infection led to bacterial infection which then caused features similar to those of Kawasaki disease or toxic shock syndrome. (Bacterial infections may occur if a viral infection impairs the body’s defences against other infections.)

Should we be worried?

SARS-CoV-2 clearly hasn’t followed the textbook on how a respiratory virus “should” behave. Unlike other respiratory viruses (such as influenza) young children generally appear to have mild or no symptoms. Severe COVID-19 in children does happen, but is extremely rare.

Similarly, Kawasaki disease is uncommon – and toxic shock syndrome and Kawasaki shock syndrome even rarer still.

We may see cases of Kawasaki disease or Kawasaki shock syndrome linked to COVID-19 in Australia, but probably only a few.

Read more: How are the most serious COVID-19 cases treated, and does the coronavirus cause lasting damage?

Parents should be reassured COVID-19 is generally very mild in children. But it’s important if your child has features of serious illness you should come to hospital immediately – pandemic or no pandemic.

Clinicians should be vigilant for cases of this possible new association. As more information emerges, we’ll develop a clearer picture of whether and how SARS-CoV-2 might relate to Kawasaki disease. At present it remains an intriguing but unproven association.

– ref. Coronavirus and Kawasaki disease in children: it’s an intriguing but unproven link – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-and-kawasaki-disease-in-children-its-an-intriguing-but-unproven-link-137415

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Carbone, Honorary, School for Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

The battle against the mental health consequences of the coronavirus pandemic is just beginning. Governments and researchers are mapping how best to prevent the predicted rise in mental health issues we face in coming months and beyond.

This involves not only preventing a wave of mental disorders from starting but also preventing increased difficulties in people already living with poor mental health.

Read more: Can’t sleep and feeling anxious about coronavirus? You’re not alone

Is more outreach the answer, where mental health teams proactively go into the community to visit people in their homes?

Do we best focus on social policies and economic support to ease the financial and mental health pressure of job losses, isolation and increased stress?

What other evidence-based ways of flattening the mental health curve are there? And once these services start, how do we make sure people actually use them?

Here’s what we face

People are already reporting psychological distress during the pandemic. And we’re just starting to collect Australian data. One preliminary study shows about 30% of survey participants have moderate to high levels of anxiety and depression. More Australian surveys are underway.

Without this urgently needed data, we cannot model the likely increase in mental health burden that lies ahead, and the impact various measures could have.

Flattening the mental health curve

The “two-pronged” approach Australia is using to deal with the virus – preventing transmission and ramping up our health-care system to cope – also provides an excellent blueprint for managing the pandemic’s mental health impacts.

We need to focus on preventing new cases of mental disorders and we need to increase the capacity of our mental health-care system to manage any increase in people needing help.

The federal government has taken steps to increase the capacity of our mental health-care system.

These have included introducing Medicare items for telehealth mental health consultations, boosting existing phone and online support services for the public and frontline health workers, and extending access to some psychosocial support services for mental health clients in the community.

While these measures are vital, on their own they will not flatten the mental health curve. These services can help people recover once they have developed a mental disorder, but they do not prevent these conditions in the first place.

Some current policies are likely to help and need to continue

Federal government action to support people through the economic shocks of COVID-19 – including JobSeeker and JobKeeper payments, measures to reduce financial stress on mortgage holders and renters – will be crucial in flattening the mental health curve.

These policies must be kept in place for as long as possible if they are to prevent mental ill-health in the coming months and years. That’s because the links between unemployment or financial stress and mental health conditions are significant.

Read more: 90% out of work with one week’s notice. These 8 charts show the unemployment impacts of coronavirus in Australia

The government also needs to address some of the underlying issues that are key social determinants of mental health – to ensure equitable access to education, employment, and income and housing security – in the longer term (and beyond the current crisis).

This is vital if we are to address the higher rates of mental ill-health in less advantaged people.

Read more: 3 in 4 people with a mental illness develop symptoms before age 25. We need a stronger focus on prevention

We already have good evidence of the types of programs that prevent mental ill-health.

These programs can help counteract the impact of risk factors for mental ill-health that have escalated during the pandemic, such as social isolation, parenting stress, workplace stress, grief and loss, and family violence.

So the federal government should consider a second mental health funding package to scale them up.

Here’s what the evidence says helps prevent mental ill-health in two major groups.

Children, young people, their parents and carers

The mental well-being of children, young people, their parents and carers should be a priority. Some parents are struggling with the loss of work. Others are working from home and home-schooling their children. All are less able to access their usual social supports.

Certain parenting programs can reduce the chance of conduct disorder, depression and anxiety among children. Many of these are designed for online delivery.

For instance, one evidence-based program helps parents learn useful strategies that are particularly important now they are spending more time with their teens under trying circumstances.

Programs that provide practical and emotional support can help reduce the stress many parents are feeling. There is evidence programs involving nurses visiting parents with young children at home can lessen the risk of child maltreatment and therefore subsequent mental health issues.

We also have evidence-based programs to help children and young people acquire the social and emotional skills that contribute to resilience.

Most of these resilience programs are designed for schools but are often poorly implemented due to the lack of time, resourcing and professional development to support schools and educators to deliver them.

So we need additional resources for schools and professional development for educators to better implement them.

Adults and older Australians

Adults also need strategies to promote their mental well-being, including self-care, and knowing when and how to ask for help.

As we are seeing, demand for mental health services in Australia has decreased and not increased, as expected, during the pandemic. This may reflect health concerns or difficulties people have accessing the right services. So we need to design service models that are safe and fit-for-purpose in the current climate.

Preventing work-related mental-health conditions is also important. This needs employers and employees to collaborate to reduce the chance of these conditions developing.

So evidence-based prevention programs are more relevant than ever as employers and employees confront new stressors, including changes in work practices caused by COVID-19.

People on the frontline of pandemic response efforts, such as health-care workers, should be a key target for prevention programs given the high levels of stress many have experienced.

Tackling loneliness is also vital and the elderly should be a prime focus.

The federal government has increased funding for the community visitors scheme, when volunteers visit older people to provide friendship and companionship, which is an excellent start.

Befriending initiatives could also work for other socially isolated people.

Where to next?

COVID-19 has disrupted our lives and our livelihoods, and the wide-ranging personal, social and economic impacts of this pandemic will continue to be felt for many months and years.

We already have a number of evidence-based approaches to prevent common mental health conditions and that can be scaled up immediately. We also need to support research to find new and more effective approaches.

But parallel efforts to encourage people to seek help if they are experiencing a mental health condition, and ensuring they get the right help, are also crucial.

This pandemic highlights the importance of innovation and trying to provide services in new and more accessible ways – whether through better use of digital mental health programs, telehealth consultations or outreach services – to ensure people can still access mental health supports and services how and when they need them during these difficult times.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. We need to flatten the ‘other’ coronavirus curve, our looming mental health crisis – https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-flatten-the-other-coronavirus-curve-our-looming-mental-health-crisis-137170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pia Lentini, Research Fellow, School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne

In this pandemic it’s tempting to look for someone, or something, to blame. Bats are a common scapegoat and the community is misled to believe getting rid of them could be a quick fix. But are bats really the problem?

Australian bats have been in the news recently for two main reasons: the misplaced fear they might carry COVID-19, and overblown reports they carry a koala-killing virus.

Read more: Why we shouldn’t be so quick to demonise bats

This recent bad press has seen increased incidences of disturbing cruelty against Australia’s bats, as well as calls to cull or “move on” bats that live close to people. Because fewer bats would mean less disease, right? Wrong. Here’s why.

Debunking bad press

COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This virus is one of thousands of coronaviruses found in mammals all over the world, most with no impact on people.

A closely related virus has previously been identified in a species of horseshoe bat in China, so it’s probable the ancestor of the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in bats.

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

While several coronaviruses have been detected in various Australian bat species, none are closely related to those viruses associated with zoonotic (animal-borne) diseases like COVID-19, SARS and MERS. And none have been recorded to infect people.

Australian bats also recently appeared in the news because of the discovery of a retrovirus in black flying-foxes related to koala immune deficiency syndrome. Some news outlets have falsely suggested bats pose a risk to koala populations.

But the original scientific paper clearly stated the proposed transmission from bats to koalas happened long ago, on evolutionary time scales. What we see in these species today are two separate viruses – there’s no evidence the virus detected in today’s bats can infect koalas, let alone cause disease.

Aussie bats have had it tough

There are about 1,400 species of bats worldwide, including 81 in Australia.

All of our bat species are native and unique. Most are small, nocturnal, and call outside of the human hearing range, so the average Australian would be lucky to see more than a couple of species in their lifetime.

This is important to remember when it comes to thinking about how often they actually interact with people.

Most Australians tend to think of “bats” as the two species of flying-foxes (or “fruit bats”) we commonly see in our cities: grey-headed flying-foxes (in the south) and black flying-foxes (in the north).

Flying-foxes have had a tough few months. Many Eucalypts failed to flower, so food shortages saw thousands of flying-foxes perish from starvation, and then many more died en masse in this summer’s extreme heat.

They were also heavily affected by the summer bushfires that burnt large tracts of the bats’ winter feeding areas.

What are bats doing in urban areas?

Flying-foxes show up in urban areas in search of food. Many residents equate seeing more flying-foxes to the species increasing in numbers, and are frustrated that the bats are classified as threatened.

In fact, grey-headed flying-foxes have experienced substantial population declines in recent years. While there are currently hundreds of thousands, historical data indicate that there were once millions.

Nonetheless, bats are not always easy to live close to. Their fly-outs make for spectacular shows, but colonies can also create a lot of noise, smell and mess.

This, plus misunderstandings around disease risks, including from COVID-19, has meant loud voices are calling for the eviction of bats from urban areas by any means possible.

Read more: Not in my backyard? How to live alongside flying-foxes in urban Australia

Why can’t we just move or cull them?

Managing bats in urban environments is no straightforward matter. Flying-foxes have complex movement dynamics, which makes “dispersing” them from urban areas extremely difficult.

Those who advocate for dispersals to be carried out often cite the Sydney and Melbourne Botanic Gardens as examples of successes. But these took place over months and years, large areas, and cost more than A$2 million each. Relatively cheaper dispersals have also been attempted, but ultimately failed.

Read more: Most laws ignore ‘human-wildlife conflict’. This makes us vulnerable to pandemics

Culling is an equally impractical and extremely controversial suggestion. Most Australians accept that needless killing and harming of native wildlife is unacceptable, and our laws reflect this.

There are the obvious animal ethics issues, but from a practical perspective, proposing we could cull (by shooting) flying-foxes in densely-populated urban areas to effectively reduce populations is also completely unrealistic.

What’s more, attempts at both dispersals and culling are known to have the undesirable effect of splintering colonies, and driving stressed bats into surrounding areas (parks, residential backyards, school grounds). Essentially, increasing people’s exposure to bats.

Physiological stress could also promote viral shedding. Flying-fox populations are already struggling to recover from severe food shortages, extreme heat events and bushfires. So advocating such actions is misguided, with the potential to amplify, rather than alleviate disease risk.

Are bats to blame?

No, bats are our friends – we rely on them more than most people realise.

Many bats are voracious predators of insects and their service to the global agricultural industry is worth billions of dollars each year.

Flying-foxes also help maintain the integrity of forests by providing long-distance pollination and seed-dispersal services. That makes them integral to the recovery of Australia’s forests from last summer’s fires.

Read more: Coronavirus: live animals are stressed in wet markets, and stressed animals are more likely to carry diseases

The fundamental issue is not the viruses in bats. SARS-CoV-2 is now a human virus, and we are responsible, knowingly or not, for its global spread.

The “epidemiological bridges” that we’ve inadvertently created – which increase our contact with wildlife through encroachment into natural areas, habitat destruction, and unregulated wildlife trade – are what’s really to blame.

– ref. No, Aussie bats won’t give you COVID-19. We rely on them more than you think – https://theconversation.com/no-aussie-bats-wont-give-you-covid-19-we-rely-on-them-more-than-you-think-137168

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hamish McCallum, Professor, Griffith School of Environment and Acting Dean of Research, Griffith Sciences, Griffith University

Lord Robert “Bob” May, Baron May of Oxford, who has died aged 84, was one of the greatest Australian scientists of the past century.

He was awarded virtually every honour the British establishment could offer: a professorship at Oxford, the presidency of the Royal Society of London, a knighthood, a seat in the House of Lords, a role as chief scientific advisor to the UK government, and membership of the Order of Merit, a personal gift of the Queen restricted to only 24 living members.

Nevertheless, he remained a quintessential Australian, with a strong Australian accent and larrikin streak – he claimed to be the first person in the 350-year history of the Royal Society to get a swearword into its minutes.

Read more: Robert Hooke: The ‘English Leonardo’ who was a 17th-century scientific superstar

May was born in Sydney in 1936 and originally trained as a physicist, becoming professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sydney in 1969. But in 1973 he shifted both continents and disciplines, becoming a professor of zoology at Princeton University, before moving to Oxford in 1988.

He brought the mathematical insights of a physicist to the then largely descriptive field of ecology, transforming it into a theoretical science with a firm mathematical basis. Nevertheless, he recognised the complexity of ecology in comparison with physics. I recall him saying “ecology is not rocket science – it’s much harder than that”.

His legacy is particularly important in the current crisis. The basic reproductive number of a disease, R0, is a statistical concept that permeates much of the discussion on how to manage the coronavirus pandemic. If we can reduce it to below one and maintain it there, we can eliminate the disease.

With his long-term collaborator, Professor Roy Anderson from Imperial College, May brought this concept to the management of infectious diseases more than 40 years ago. This distillation of a complex ecological process into a simple mathematical concept was typical of his scientific insight.

Read more: 6 countries, 6 curves: how nations that moved fast against COVID-19 avoided disaster

May made many other major contributions to ecology. One of his earliest insights, which remains crucially important today, is that complex ecosystems are not necessarily more resilient than simple ones.

Ecologists had assumed that diverse and complex ecosystems such as coral reefs and tropical rainforests were better able to resist disturbance. But May’s mathematical models showed this was not the case. As we enter an era of unprecedented human impact on the natural world, we would do well to remember this key insight.

May was also one of the leaders in developing chaos theory, showing that simple ecological systems can show extraordinarily complex and unpredictable behaviour.

More recently, he brought his ecologist’s perspective to bear on another type of complex, dynamic system, by analysing the behaviour of financial markets.

Although he was in no way a field ecologist, he had a longstanding enthusiasm for nature. Until the final few years of his life, he organised annual walking trips to the European Alps with his ecological colleagues. Fit and wiry, not to mention intensely competitive, he was a hard man to beat to the top of a mountain.

Compared with his huge success in the UK, May remains comparatively unknown in his native Australia. However, he did receive our highest honour, a Companion of the Order of Australia, in 1998.

As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, using the modelling methods he had a hand in developing, we should remember and appreciate his world-class contributions to science.

– ref. Vale Robert May, the legendary scientist who helped us understand ecosystems, chaos theory and even pandemics – https://theconversation.com/vale-robert-may-the-legendary-scientist-who-helped-us-understand-ecosystems-chaos-theory-and-even-pandemics-137595

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelsie Nabben, RMIT Block Chain Innovation Hub Research Assistant / PhD Candidate, RMIT University

Since its release on Sunday, experts and members of the public alike have raised privacy concerns with the federal government’s COVIDSafe mobile app.

The contact tracing app aims to stop COVID-19’s spread by “tracing” interactions between users via Bluetooth, and alerting those who may have been in proximity with a confirmed case.

Read more: Explainer: what is contact tracing and how does it help limit the coronavirus spread?

According to a recent poll commissioned by The Guardian, 57% of respondents said they were “concerned about the security of personal information collected” through COVIDSafe.

In its coronavirus response, the government has a golden opportunity to build public trust. There are other ways to build a digital contact tracing system, some of which would arguably raise fewer doubts about data security than the app.

All eyes on encryption

Incorporating advanced cryptography into COVIDSafe could have given Australian citizens a mathematical guarantee of their privacy, rather than a legal one.

A team at Canada’s McGill University is working on a solution that uses “mix networks” to send cryptographically “hashed” contact tracing location data through multiple, decentralised servers. This process hides the location and time stamps of users, sharing only necessary data.

This would let the government alert those who have been near a diagnosed person, without revealing other identifiers that could be used to trace back to them.

It’s currently unclear what encryption standards COVIDSafe is using, as the app’s source code has not been publicly released, and the government has been widely criticised for this. Once the code is available, researchers will be able to review and assess how safe users’ data is.

COVIDSafe is based on Singapore’s TraceTogether mobile app. Cybersecurity experts Chris Culnane, Eleanor McMurtry, Robert Merkel and Vanessa Teague have raised concerns over the app’s encryption standards.

If COVIDSafe has similar encryption standards – which we can’t know without the source code – it would be wrong to say the app’s data are encrypted. According to the experts, COVIDSafe shares a phone’s exact model number in plaintext with other users, whose phones store this detail alongside the original user’s corresponding unique ID.

Tough tech techniques for privacy

US-based advocacy group The Open Technology Institute has argued in favour of a “differential privacy” method for encrypting contact tracing data. This involves injecting statistical “noise” into datasets, giving individuals plausible deniability if their data are leaked for purposes other than contact tracing.

Zero-knowledge proof is another option. In this computation technique, one party (the prover) proves to another party (the verifier) they know the value of a specific piece of information, without conveying any other information. Thus, it would “prove” necessary information such as who a user has been in proximity with, without revealing details such as their name, phone number, postcode, age, or other apps running on their phone.

Not on the cloud, but still an effective device

Some approaches to contact tracing involve specialised hardware. Simmel is a wearable pen-like contact tracing device. It’s being designed by a Singapore-based team, supported by the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet program. All data are stored in the device itself, so the user has full control of their trace history until they share it.

This provides citizens a tracing beacon they can give to health officials if diagnosed, but is otherwise not linked to them through phone data or personal identifiers.

Missed opportunity

The response to COVIDSafe has been varied. While the number of downloads has been promising since its release, iPhone users have faced a range of functionality issues. Federal police are also investigating a series of text message scams allegedly aiming to dupe users.

The federal government has not chosen a decentralised, open-source, privacy-first approach. A better response to contact tracing would have been to establish clearer user information requirements and interoperability specifications (standards allowing different technologies and data to interact).

Also, inviting the private sector to help develop solutions (backed by peer review) could have encouraged innovation and provided economic opportunities.

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

How do we define privacy?

Personal information collected via COVIDSafe is governed under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Biosecurity Determination 2020.

These legal regimes reveal a gap between the public’s and the government’s conceptions of “privacy”.

You may think privacy means the government won’t share your private information. But judging by its general approach, the government thinks privacy means it will only share your information if it has authorised itself to do so.

Read more: The new data retention law seriously invades our privacy – and it’s time we took action

Fundamentally, once you’ve told the government something, it has broad latitude to share that information using legislative exemptions and permissions built up over decades. This is why, when it comes to data security, mathematical guarantees trump legal “guarantees”.

For example, data collected by COVIDSafe may be accessible to various government departments through the recent anti-encryption legislation, the Assistance and Access Act. And you could be prosecuted for not properly self-isolating, based on your COVIDSafe data.

A right to feel secure

Moving forward, we may see more iterations of contact tracing technology in Australia and around the world.

The World Health Organisation is advocating for interoperability between contact tracing apps as part of the global virus response. And reports from Apple and Google indicate contact tracing will soon be built into your phone’s operating system.

As our government considers what to do next, it must balance privacy considerations with public health. We shouldn’t be forced to choose one over another.

– ref. The COVIDSafe app was just one contact tracing option. These alternatives guarantee more privacy – https://theconversation.com/the-covidsafe-app-was-just-one-contact-tracing-option-these-alternatives-guarantee-more-privacy-137400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoffrey Mann, Sessional Lecturer, RMIT University

If you want to solve a problem quickly it helps to get many minds working together to find a solution, and that’s what happens in a hackathon.

It usually involves teams of people working over a short period of time to brainstorm an idea. But that’s not possible with the current advice to avoid gatherings thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

That hasn’t stopped people embracing hackathons, this time to help solve some of the problems the pandemic itself has created. Instead of face-to-face meet-ups, though, people are doing them online in virtual hackathons.

In these times of uncertainty, people are trying to embrace creativity, innovation and collaboration to develop and implement solutions to the challenges of COVID-19.

How does a hackathon work?

A typical hackathon usually starts with describing a problem, sketching a possible solution to that problem, designing that solution and then launching a prototype.

All this usually takes place over 24 to 48 hours.

At the end you will be exhausted. But you will have worked with a very diverse team to conceive, build and refine a working solution that hopefully can address a significant problem in society.

Some people assume you need to be a software engineer to participate in the hackathon. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Techstars is an organisation that helps start-up companies and it has organised a coronavirus virtual hackathon calling on people including:

Developers, designers, marketers, nurses, doctors, students, scientists, teachers — anyone with an idea to tackle the challenges created by the global pandemic [is] welcome.

This is possible because virtual hackathons are creating an open online environment where people from around the world can apply their particular skill sets in a diverse team to solve a global problem in a short time.

A global effort

Garage48 is an organisation that helps set up hackathons. It says it has already helped more than 55 hackathons around the world that are trying to solve the global crisis of COVID-19.

Some of the most notable include:

Global Hack: this global hackathon had more than 12,000 participants from 100 countries. They worked on 500 life-changing projects including mental health, environment, governance and remote education solutions during COVID-19.

The winning team developed a solar-powered solution for accessible, affordable and barrier-free access to hand disinfection.

MIT COVID-19 Challenge: this global hackathon had more than 1,500 participants from 90 countries. They worked on 238 solutions for issues such as education online, food availability and emergency responses during COVID-19.

One of the winning teams’ solution was to build a tele-health platform to allow the monitoring of vital signs such as heart rate and blood oxygen of patients at home to help ease pressure on hospital admissions.

Teams Australia

While some of these global hackathons are open to Australians, it doesn’t mean Australians can only participate in overseas hackathons. We have them here as well.

ACS Flatten the Curve Hack: the Australian Computer Society had more than 2,000 participants brainstorming over 48 hours to solve remote education, health system, future of work and mental health challenges during COVID-19.

One of the finalists was a team that built a computer game as a way to help children better understand COVID-19.

One of the reasons for the increase in virtual hackathons is that it is easy for people to participate online thanks to the technology underpinning them.

They incorporate a range of online tools and apps, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Discord, as the communication platforms between team members around the world.

They also use Microsoft’s One Drive and Google Drive to share documents and files between team members.

Then using video-conferencing technology such as Zoom and Skype the teams can present the finalist to everyone around the world.

Your help is needed

Taking part in hackathons has a number of benefits, from financial awards to mentorship to turn a team’s prototype into a possible profitable firm.

Beyond these rewards, the COVID-19 hackathons empower everyday people with the opportunity to implement in a short time a solution to a problem that is impacting everyone’s family members and friends.

Signing up to virtual hackathons is as easy as signing up to Netflix. All you need to do is find the hackathon that is addressing a problem you are interested in and sign up.

You do not even need to prepare team members beforehand, as you will find team members during the hackathon who will become new friends by the end of the competition.

– ref. Virtual hackathons can help you solve coronavirus problems without leaving your home – https://theconversation.com/virtual-hackathons-can-help-you-solve-coronavirus-problems-without-leaving-your-home-136956

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gigi Foster, Professor, School of Economics, UNSW

Australia has been lucky. We’ve had time to consider our response to COVID-19, based on what was happening in other countries, before it hit us.

We implemented restrictions that are likely to have saved many from dying of COVID-19. Fewer than 100 have died so far, a fraction of the number initially projected.

At this pivotal moment, we need to think carefully about how best to protect ourselves going forward.

We need to consider whether the costs of continued restrictions to prevent transmission of COVID-19 – costs that can be quantified in terms of human lives harmed and human lives lost – are worth the benefits.

It is unpopular to question the value of protecting Australians against COVID-19 when the world is in the middle of the pandemic.

Read more: What might trigger a return to ‘normal’? Why our coronavirus exit strategy is … TBC

Yet continuing the restrictions we have put in place will increase deaths from other causes, and decrease the quality of many lives.

Moving forward, we will need to make decisions that maximise the health and well-being of all Australians, including the most vulnerable. We will need to consider not only the deaths and suffering the restrictions prevent (the benefits), but also the deaths and suffering they bring about (the costs).

Benefit: lives saved

By Tuesday April 28, COVID-19 had killed 84 Australian residents, only a fraction of the 134,000 initially expected.

This striking outcome reflects both government restrictions and rapid responses by individuals, with the actual contribution of each uncertain.

Australia’s geography, environment, culture and demographic makeup are different from other countries which have had many more deaths, and this too might have contributed.

But the restrictions will have saved many lives that otherwise would have been taken by COVID-19.

Read more: Unlocking Australia: What can benefit-cost analysis tell us?

In Sweden, which had no forced lockdown and only voluntary social distancing, around 2500 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19.

Adjusted for Australia’s higher population, that per-capita death rate would have produced about 6,000 COVID-19 Australian deaths by now, instead of 84.

The restrictions might have also saved lives by reducing things such as traffic and workplace accidents. Around 100 Australians die each month in road accidents and 14 in accidents at work.

Cost: lives lost to domestic violence

Concerns are emerging internationally about increased deaths due to COVID-19 restrictions. Despite reporting lags and uncertainty about the specific causes, the signs are worrying.

Australia’s record in domestic violence was shameful before the pandemic.

On average, one woman every week is killed by her current or ex-partner in Australia. One in every four Australian women has experienced emotional abuse from a current or former partner.

In the UK, deaths from domestic violence have more than doubled during COVID-19 restrictions. Calls to helplines for women have surged seven-fold.

Read more: How do we keep family violence perpetrators ‘in view’ during the COVID-19 lockdown?

In Australia, Google searches related to domestic violence almost doubled, with increasing calls from potential perpetrators of domestic violence.

Government restrictions have left many potential victims vulnerable inside their homes. Whilst the Australian government has pledged A$150 million to support those experiencing domestic violence during COVID-19, like Jobkeeper, the extra services may not be enough to fully fix the problems exacerbated by the shutdown.

Domestic violence not only leads to deaths, but also to increased suffering of victims, which can be quantified in units such as wellbeing-adjusted life years (known as WELLBYs).

These human costs are highly likely to be paid by young women and by mothers, creating inter-generational trauma, particularly within vulnerable populations.

Read more: Mums with an intellectual disability already risk family violence and losing their kids. Coronavirus could make things worse

By contrast, the median age of Australians who have died due to COVID-19 is 79.

Many had pre-existing heart and lung conditions and might not have benefited from costly and invasive interventions such as mechanical ventilation.

Cost: lives lost to suicide

Each year over 65,000 Australians attempt suicide. 3000 die by suicide. Suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians between the ages 15 and 44.

A recent study described coronavirus interventions as the “perfect storm” for increased suicide risk.

Although the COVID-19 crisis is still evolving, deaths by suicide climbed in the United States during the 1918–19 influenza pandemic, and among older people in Hong Kong during the 2003 SARS epidemic.

Read more: Is your mental health deteriorating during the coronavirus pandemic? Here’s what to look out for

Another study concludes that suicide rates in Europe and the United States climb by about 1% for every one percentage point increase in unemployment. During the 2008 financial crisis Europe and the US recorded an extra 10,000 extra deaths by suicide. The authors expect twice as many extra deaths due to suicide over the next 24 months.

To the extent that this kind of increased human suffering is a result of COVID-19 restrictions, it should be counted in any assessment of whether to ease them.

Cost: lives lost to health care crowd-out

Arguably the biggest short-run health cost of our COVID-19 arrangements has flowed from the government’s preparation for a much greater burden on the health system than eventuated.

Private hospitals were brought under state control and non-urgent surgeries postponed. In the past week some have been restarted.

And there is growing evidence that people are avoiding seeking other forms of medical help because they are afraid of contracting COVID-19 or don’t want to burden health care providers.

In Britain, the number of people presenting at Accident and Emergency has fallen by one quarter. There is concern in the Britain and in Australia about excess deaths as a consequence.

In the UK there were 7,996 more registered deaths in the week ending April 10 than the five-year average for that period. COVID-19 accounted for 6213 of them, leaving an extra 1810 unexplained.

Are we prepared to do the maths?

There are undoubted health benefits from COVID-19 restrictions, including deaths averted and quality-adjusted life years saved. But there are also costs, which can be measured using the same metrics.

They include the consequences of lost education quality for the coronavirus cohort, and the long-run impact of a prolonged economic downturn.

Read more: Australian schools are closing because of coronavirus, but should they be?

Making decisions based on lives saved and lost is challenging, but not new.

Our government makes such decisions every day when it considers such things as how much to spend on cancer research or whether to fund a new drug through the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

These decisions are typically made using quality-adjusted life years or numbers of deaths averted, allowing governments to directly compare lives with lives, and deaths with deaths.

Now that the first wave of the pandemic has peaked, it is time for governments to consider carefully their next moves.

Sharing the full equation they are using – including the real costs as well as the benefits of interventions – would enable the public to evaluate whether those decisions are being made with Australia’s best interests in mind.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. COVID lockdowns have human costs as well as benefits. It’s time to consider both – https://theconversation.com/covid-lockdowns-have-human-costs-as-well-as-benefits-its-time-to-consider-both-137233

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeffrey McGee, Associate Professor, University of Tasmania

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order reaffirming that companies joining US mining activities on the moon would have property rights over lunar resources.

The order also made clear the US wasn’t bound by international treaties on the moon. Instead, the US would set up a bilateral or multilateral legal framework with other like-minded states to govern lunar mining activities.

This bold move by the Trump administration poses some challenging questions for Australia, given our past commitment to international space treaties and our current support the US Artemis lunar program.

Read more: Giant leap for corporations? The Trump administration wants to mine resources in space, but is it legal?

Australia is a longstanding member of all five space treaties. Also, the terms “international” and “responsible” are two of the principles guiding the Australian Space Agency in designing and implementing its policies and programs.

As such, Australia will need to decide how it plans to respond to Trump’s move and how this will shape its future space policies. Will it continue to hold an “international” view toward the exploitation of resources from outer space?

Or can Australian companies “responsibly” take part in mining of the moon without contravening the country’s treaty obligations?

Space resources as a ‘common heritage of mankind’

The Trump administration’s proposal is potentially at odds with a key principle in the 1979 Moon Treaty known as the “common heritage of mankind” (CHM).

The CHM principle is an important part of other areas of international law, such as the UN Law of the Sea Convention, which sets restrictions on the mining of deep seabed areas that lie outside national marine boundaries. Specifically, it allows commercial mining, but only if the benefits are shared among different countries by the International Seabed Authority.

Under the Moon Treaty, the CHM principle similarly does not give exclusive property rights to any state or individual companies. Instead, it provides for the “equitable” international sharing of space resources.

Read more: It’s not clear where Trump’s ‘Space Force’ fits within international agreement on peaceful use of space

The treaty also requires its state parties to negotiate international rules governing the exploitation and use of these resources.

As party to the Moon Treaty, Australia is obliged to follow these provisions. However, the US has never joined the treaty. It has criticised the CHM principle several times, and essentially does not support the idea of “equitable” sharing of space resources.

This is why the Trump administration is pursuing a separate framework to govern the exploitation and use of resources on the moon.

A difficult balancing act for Australia

There are now some concerns Australia could shift from its commitment to the CHM principle and side with the US view that states and companies should be permitted to freely exploit space resources.

Perhaps due to Australia’s obligations under the Moon Treaty, Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not say anything about the possibility of Australian involvement in mining on the moon when promising to support NASA’s Artemis program last September.

Read more: All of humanity should share in the space mining boom

Instead, Morrison vaguely pledged $150 million investment into Australian businesses and new technologies to help the country become more competitive in the space industry and better support future US space missions to Mars and the moon.

However, NASA may be looking for a different type of collaboration with Australia, focused more on Australian mining capabilities.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told the Australian Financial Review last year that Australian mining companies could have a very specific role to play in space.

…the lunar missions will rely on turning hundreds of millions of tons of mined water ice recently discovered on the moon into liquid forms of hydrogen and oxygen to power spacecraft. That autonomous capability of extracting resources is something that Australia has in its toolkit.

Although there have been no clear messages from the Australian mining industry about whether they have interest in mining on the moon, companies such as Rio Tinto have already been developing the relevant technologies.

Read more: Australia can pick up its game and land a Moon mission

When finalising a specific plan to implement its $150 million investment in space research, the Australian government needs to think carefully about how to comply with its treaty obligations, including CHM, while still supporting its approach to NASA’s lunar program.

Australia needs to decide what it values more – an outer space shared by all, or the profits from possible mining deals that come from a more exclusive approach to space.

– ref. Australia has long valued an outer space shared by all. Mining profits could change this – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-long-valued-an-outer-space-shared-by-all-mining-profits-could-change-this-137405

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Assistant Professor, School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

More than 3 million Australians have downloaded the Australian government’s COVIDSafe contact-tracing app in the three days since its release.

That’s impressive.

But not as impressive as the 2 million downloads in the first 24 hours. The slowing rate suggests it will take longer to get to 4 million, and remember the federal government wants 10 million people, 40% of the population, to download and use the app.

Even with politicians appealing to our better instincts and dangling the carrot of getting back to normal once we reach the golden goal, the evidence from overseas suggests we won’t get there without extra carrots.

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

Singapore, for example, released its TraceTogether app more than a month ago and still hasn’t cracked 20%. Israel’s Shield app has done no better.

Here is where behavioural economists can help.

Giving people a nudge

Classical economic theory assumes individuals make rational decisions. Behavioural economics is interested is understanding the reality of human decisions – partly rational, partly emotional, and profoundly influenced by the fact we are highly social creatures.

Behavioural economists do experiments similar to those in psychology departments, observing participants in controlled experiments to understand the factors that drive their decisions.

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

Based on these insights, they have been able to propose “nudges” – subtle changes to communications, policies, schemes and systems that more effectively encourage people to behave in ways better for them and society. These avoid the negative consequences of more coercive approaches.

An example is the “opt-out” nudge that has dramatically increased organ donation. Conventional economic theory would say people either want to be a donor or do not. But behavioural research found only 42% of people would “opt in” to be an organ donor while 82% would choose to stay a donor in an “opt-out” scheme. This simple change to donor schemes has saved many lives.

Different nudges informed by behavourial research have been used to encourage recycling and increase cancer-screening rates.

So what can behavioural economics tell us about encouraging take-up of the contact-tracing app?

Getting around to it

The first issue is apathy or inertia.

We can see evidence of this in Australia’s download numbers so far. In a poll of 1,011 Australians last week, 45% of respondents said they intended to download the app, while 28% said they would not and 27% said they were unsure.

Assuming those who have downloaded the app so far are from first group, the figures suggest a third of the population is willing to download the app but just hasn’t gotten around to it. This is the first group to “nudge”.

Here the simplest form of nudge – sheer repetition – can be quite effective. Marketing guru Jeffrey Lant coined the “rule of seven’” – that a customer will only buy when they have seen a message seven times. For other types of behaviour it doesn’t necessarily even require that.

A controlled experiment by the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian government in 2017, for example, found any type of SMS reminder to those with credit-card debt led to a 28% increase in repayments the following month.

So the first lesson is: message repetition.

If everybody else is doing it

Repetition by whom, though?

Certainly the messaging can’t all come from the federal government. It has a trust problem when it comes to matters of digital privacy. Its messaging must be focused on addressing those trust concerns, by strengthening privacy guarantees through legislation and making the app’s code public.

For more general messaging to encourage downloads, behavioural economics offers what is perhaps its most fundamental insight.

Here’s how David Halpern, head of the British government’s Behavioural Insights Team, puts it in his book Inside the Nudge Unit:

The behaviour of other people has a powerful influence on us. It is almost impossible not to follow the gaze of a crowd. We laugh twice as often at a comedy show when we watch it with someone else.

Now that might seem obvious, but behavourial economists have studied the phenomenon in detail. They’ve measured to what extent we care about behaving like other people – 60-70% of the population care a lot, according to one study – and the factors that affect our behaviour.

Read more: Coronavirus contact-tracing apps: most of us won’t cooperate unless everyone does

Behavioural studies have found, for instance, that people were eight times more likely to drop a flyer left under their car windscreen if they saw many other flyers on the ground.

It has also measured the powerful nudge of simply informing people about how others act. Such messages have been effective in increasing towel reuse by hotel guests and improving tax compliance.

So the second lesson is the importance of communicating a social norm. Such nudges are likely to be valuable for motivating both procrastinators and the undecided.

Well, if you say so

Who those nudges come from is also important.

While we care about being part of the crowd, we also are highly influenced by those we trust.

Why, what and who we trust has been the subject of much behavioural research, because it’s particularly relevant to consumer choices.

In this case, faced with an avalanche of information (and misinformation), we might look for guidance from those we know closely. Or respected members of the community. Or people in particular professions, with doctors, nurses and scientists being the most trusted in Australia.

An example of this influence is shown by a tweet from Nobel laureate and immunologist Peter Doherty. His support for the COVIDSafe app was enough to change the mind of at least one person.

There will need to be influencers appealing to all demographics – actors, musicians, television personalities, athletes.

So the third lesson is the importance of trust.

More levers in the toolbox

Used smartly, these three insights from behavioural economics on nudges that spur action, communicate social norms and reinforce trust could be highly effective, and cost-effective, in moving the nation closer to the government’s goal.

As behavioural economists, though, we suspect getting the whole way will require digging deeper into the nudge toolbox.

The levers likely to be needed are the ones economists are most comfortable with: financial incentives or disincentives.

Read more: Vital Signs: Modelling tells us the coronavirus app will need a big take-up, economics tells us how to get it

Economists Richard Holden and Joshua Gans, for example, have proposed a $10 monthly rebate on phone bills for those who download the app. Behavioural economics can provide important insights into designing effective financial carrots.

But that’s another article.

– ref. Need help selling the COVIDSafe app? Call a behavioural economist – https://theconversation.com/need-help-selling-the-covidsafe-app-call-a-behavioural-economist-137157

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alistair Evans, Associate Professor, Monash University

A species of mammal that lived in what is now Madagascar when dinosaurs roamed the island has finally been described today in Nature.

The work is based on a complete skeleton of the animal found more than two decades ago.

The cat-sized animal, known as Adalatherium hui or “crazy beast”, has features not found in today’s mammals, so it could be one of evolution’s abandoned experiments in developing new life.

The origin of mammals

Almost all the mammals today fall into two groups: the placentals (which includes dogs, mice, whales, cows and us) and marsupials (kangaroos, the koala and the Tasmanian devil). While very distinctive today, both these groups were mostly small and mouse-like in the time of the dinosaurs.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do we know if a dinosaur skeleton is from a child dinosaur or an adult dinosaur?

During this time, several other types of mammals roamed the Earth. Some were the ancestors of modern mammals, but many others are long extinct. We see glimpses into these little known and extinct mammal groups but they are a mystery to us.

Since the 1980s strange fossil teeth have been found in places such as South America, India and Madagascar. These modern landmasses were once joined as part of the southern supercontinent known as Gondwana. The strange fossil mammals found there are named the Gondwanatheria.

When all that is known of an animal is its teeth, it is a challenge to distinguish what exactly it is and how it relates to the fossil remains of better understood groups of early mammals.

We needed a skeleton

The breakthrough came when a team of palaeontologists (led by Dave Krause) discovered the first intact skeleton during excavations in Madagascar in 1999.

This remarkable find, dated to near the end of the Cretaceous period (66 million years ago), showed gondwanatherians were different from all other mammals known.

There were so many mysteries surrounding how this animal looked that it remained a challenge to relate this species back to other mammals. As a result, the process of scientific description was long and complicated.

Introducing the ‘crazy beast’

We gave the full skeleton the name Adalatherium hui. It’s a combination of a Malagasy word “Adàla” meaning “crazy” and Greek word “therium” for “beast”, in reference to the many strange features found in this unusual mammal.

The skeleton was encased in a block of sandstone, which was delicately sculpted away to reveal the bones in almost life position.

Because it was so fragile, we relied on X-ray microCT scanning through the rock to digitally map the bones and teeth. Some of the fossil parts were shattered, the back teeth and the braincase in particular.

Over hundreds of hours, the minute fragments of teeth were painstakingly put back together in a 3D jigsaw puzzle in the computer.

Each component could then be 3D-printed at real size, or enlarged to see the features better.

A most bizarre mammal

There is much about this animal that was so unusual. Features of the skull (the largest number of small holes for nerves and blood vessels in any mammal) and ear bones (small ridges inside the cochlea) have never been found in other mammals.

Among the most bizarre features in Adalatherium are its teeth. Not only did this species have mouse-like ever-growing front teeth, but the rear teeth are completely unlike those of any other mammal that has ever been described.

The ridges and bumps on teeth are generally very consistent within each group of mammals, so they can act like a fingerprint to tell us who they are. Adalatherium has a new fingerprint, with a diamond-shaped ridge running around the outside of each tooth that interlocks with its opposing tooth in the other jaw.

From examining its unusually bowed leg bones, strong back muscles and big claws on the back feet, we suggest Adalatherium was a robust animal, perhaps capable of digging for food or shelter. Its unusual teeth may indicate a plant diet.

The dramatic differences between Adalatherium and all other mammals known, past and present, shows there is more than one way to be a mammal.

The Gondwanatherians therefore represent an experiment in evolution, one of a number of early mammal groups where different body shapes and ways of life were still being tinkered with, before most died out, leaving the familiar mammals of today.

Island life for dinosaur-age mammals

One reason this group became so different likely relates back to where it was living: on an island.

Adalatherium lived in what is now Madagascar, which at that time had already been set adrift, separated from what became mainland Africa and the other major landmasses for tens of millions of years.

Read more: How smart were our ancestors? Turns out the answer isn’t in brain size, but blood flow

Strange things can happen on islands. Very large animals evolve to become smaller, perhaps because there is not enough food on the island to feed a population of giants.

Conversely, very small animals sometimes evolve to become larger, especially if there are no large predators on the island with them. Such was the case with the gorilla-sized lemurs that lived on Madagascar only a few thousand years ago, before humans arrived.

This is known as the island effect and may explain why Adalatherium is one of the largest mammals of its era. It was around the size of a domestic cat at about 3.1kg, possibly due to its freedom from competitors on its island home.

– ref. Say hello to the ‘crazy beast’ mammal who lived among the dinosaurs – https://theconversation.com/say-hello-to-the-crazy-beast-mammal-who-lived-among-the-dinosaurs-137380

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sallie Yea, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies, La Trobe University

In recent weeks, Singapore went from global success story in its response to the coronavirus outbreak to having the largest number of cases in Southeast Asia.

There are some 15,000 confirmed cases in Singapore as of this week – more than Japan, South Korea and Indonesia.

Most startlingly, though, is the number of migrant worker infections in the country, which dwarfs that of the general population. For example, of the 528 new cases detected on Tuesday, 511 were foreign workers living in dormitories, while another seven were workers living outside the dormitories.

Singapore’s approach to disease mitigation, generally speaking, mirrors the country’s approach to just about everything – control, surveillance and containment.

Read more: Why Singapore’s coronavirus response worked – and what we can all learn

But the increasing COVID-19 infection rates among migrant workers suggest there is another side to the tight regulation that governs nearly every aspect of life in Singapore – the institutionalised neglect of the country’s 300,000-plus migrant workers.

And it is this neglect that, my research suggests, lies at the heart of explanations for Singapore’s COVID-19 crisis.

Cramped rooms with one toilet for 80 men

In 2014-15, I carried out a large study of transient migrant workmen from India and Bangladesh in Singapore, interviewing close to 200 men over 18 months. Most worked in the construction and shipping industries, and some in the landscaping and cleaning sectors.

As well as uncovering stories of routine labour exploitation and debt bondage among the workers, I also found most workers’ living conditions were shockingly substandard.

Employers are supposed to provide meals for migrant workers, for example, but workers complained the food was often no more than soggy rice and gravy. Often, it was spoiled and inedible.

My research also found substandard accommodation greatly compounded the difficulties these workers faced.

Many migrant workers live in the cramped, purpose-built dormitories (PBDs) shown in media reports in recent days.

These dormitories only became common a couple of years ago when migrant-rights organisations began focusing on housing conditions of workers. The government’s response was to build large dormitories in remote, outlying areas.

This enabled the government to claim it had addressed criticisms of poor worker housing. At the same time, it ensured these workers were further separated spatially and socially from the rest of Singapore’s population.

This separation has been an ongoing concern of the government since the so-called “Little India riots” of 2013, which broke out after a migrant worker was knocked down and killed by a bus. More than 50 police officers and eight civilians were hurt, and dozens of Indian workers were either charged with offences or sent home.

Read more: Riots in Singapore as it struggles to juggle growth and migration

But not all, or even the majority, of workers live in dormitories. Many live on the upper floors of small construction subcontracting firms, or in shipping containers and other temporary housing on work sites.

The conditions are abhorrent: cramped rooms housing up to 30 men apiece, no air-conditioning or appropriate ventilation, bed bugs and cockroaches, and often just one filthy toilet shared by more than 80 people.

In both dormitories and these accommodations, two men often rotate on one bed. When the day-shift worker returns to the room to sleep, he takes the place of the night-shift worker using the same bed.

In these conditions, dengue and other waterborne diseases thrive. A few weeks before I arrived in Singapore in 2012, there was a massive outbreak of dengue among migrant workers in the industrial northwest. Many men were infected, and most swiftly deported.

In 2015, I visited a factory where five Bangladeshi men were pursuing a case for unpaid salary against their employer. They told me previous workers had contracted dengue and were deported while they were still sick. As a result, they were pushed by their boss to work longer hours, despite not being paid. The deportation of injured and sick workers is a common occurrence in Singapore.

These living and working conditions explain why we are seeing such high rates of COVID-19 infections now. The government’s main response has been the construction of several large dormitories for workers, but beyond that, it has yet to take comprehensive steps to improve conditions.

The government does have a salary and injury claims system for migrant workers, but NGOs in the country claim it – like policies to improve workers’ living conditions – is woefully inadequate.

Workers now very afraid of COVID-19

Last week, one of the participants in my research, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi man named Monir, sent me an email saying:

We are in lockdown for two months. Can’t go out. Singapore very danger now. But we are lucky we not stay worker’s dormitory. We sleep Geylang [a district of Singapore] company store.

During the current crisis, the workers in the dormitories are currently only allowed outside their rooms at certain times to reduce contact with others. Some have been relocated to offshore, floating accommodations where they are similarly confined.

Debbie Fordyce, a longtime migrant worker rights advocate, told me,

When returning Singapore students were give a two-week holiday in five-star hotels rather than be a potential source of infection to their family, these men are being bunched together with a far higher vulnerability than if they were in a space alone or with fewer people.

The government should have been better prepared for a possible outbreak among these workers. Instead, it turned a blind eye to their needs.

When the government issued face masks to all Singaporeans at the fist sign of COVID-19 in early February, migrant workers were excluded. (The philanthropic arm of a state investor later distributed more than 1 million masks to migrant workers and domestic helpers.)

Read more: Refugees need protection from coronavirus too, and must be released

Last week, the government imposed a stay-at-home order for 180,000 migrant workers in the construction industry until May 4, confining them to their dormitories. Advocacy groups have warned about quarantining large groups of people together like this, comparing it to cruise ships.

While recent media coverage on the COVID-19 crisis in Singapore has exposed the substandard conditions of migrant workers, my study shows there is a longer history of institutionalised neglect of these men.

This is not an exceptional time for these workers – their rights have long been ignored because they are transient and, for the most part, deemed disposable.

– ref. This is why Singapore’s coronavirus cases are growing: a look inside the dismal living conditions of migrant workers – https://theconversation.com/this-is-why-singapores-coronavirus-cases-are-growing-a-look-inside-the-dismal-living-conditions-of-migrant-workers-136959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Forehead, Research Fellow, University of Wollongong

Air quality on Australia’s roads matters. On any given day (when we’re not in lockdown) people meet, commute, exercise, shop and walk with children near busy streets. But to date, air quality monitoring at roadsides has been inadequate.

I and my colleagues wanted to change that. Using materials purchased from electronics and hardware stores for around A$150, we built our own air quality monitors.

Our newly published research reveals how our devices detected particulate pollution at busy intersections at levels ten times worse than background levels measured at official air monitoring stations.

Read more: These 5 images show how air pollution changed over Australia’s major cities before and after lockdown

Our open-source design means citizen scientists can make their own devices to measure air quality, and make the data publicly available.

This would provide more valuable data about city traffic pollution, giving people the information they need to protect their health.

Particulate matter: a tiny killer

Everyone is exposed to airborne particulate matter emitted by industry, transport and natural sources such as bushfires and dust storms.

Particulate matter from traffic is a mixture of toxic compounds, both solid and liquid. It’s a well-known health hazard, particularly for children, the elderly, pedestrians, cyclists and people working on or near roads.

Particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, referred to as PM2.5, is particularly harmful. To put this in context, a human hair is about 100 micrometres in width.

When inhaled, these fine particles can damage heart and brain function, circulation, breathing and the immune and endocrine systems. They have also been linked to cancer and low birth weight in newborns.

Do-it-yourself air monitoring

Highly reliable equipment to measure air quality has traditionally been expensive, and is not deployed widely.

Official air quality monitoring usually takes place open spaces or parks, to provide an averaged, background reading of pollution across a wide area. The monitoring stations are not typically placed at pollution sources, such as power stations or roads.

However there is growing evidence that people travelling outdoors near busy city roads are exposed to high levels of traffic emissions.

Air quality monitors can be bought off the shelf at low cost, but their readings are not always reliable.

So I and other researchers at the University of Wollongong’s SMART Infrastructure Facility made our own monitors. They essentially consist of a sensor, weatherproof housing, a controller and a fan. Anyone with basic electronics knowledge and assembly skills can make and install one. The monitor connects to the internet (we used The Things Network) and the software required to run it and collect the data is available for free here.

The weatherproof housing cost about A$16 to make. It consists of PVC plumbing parts, a few screws and small pieces of fibreglass insect screen, which can be bought at any hardware store.

Sensors can be bought from electronics retailers for little as A$30, but many are not tested, calibrated or overseen by experts and can be inaccurate. We tested three, and chose the Novasense SDS011, which we bought for A$32.

A controller is needed to run the monitor and send data to the internet. We bought ours from an online retailer for under A$60. A fan, needed to circulate air through the housing, was bought from Jaycar for A$14.

Accounting for wiring and a few other parts, our monitors cost under A$150 each to make – ten times cheaper than mid-grade commercial detectors – and produce reasonably accurate results.

What we found

Following community meetings, we deployed our sensors at nine key locations and intersections around Liverpool in Western Sydney, a region which has traditionally suffered from poor air quality.

Our monitors have been in place since March 2019, placed close to pedestrian height on structures such as light poles, shade awnings or walls.

Read more: Australia needs stricter rules to curb air pollution, but there’s a lot we could all do now

They have detected roadside measurements of PM2.5 at values of up to 280 micrograms per cubic metre in morning peak traffic. This is more than ten times the readings at the nearest official monitoring station. The severity of the pollution and how long it lasts depends on how bad the traffic is.

These findings are comparable to other studies of busy roads.

Breathing easier

Our experience of roadside air quality can be improved in a number of ways.

Obviously, exposure to air pollution is worst at peak traffic times, so plan your travel to avoid these times, if possible.

Pollution levels drop quickly with distance from busy roads and can be at near background levels just one block away. So try to detour along quieter back streets or through parks.

Barriers, such as dense roadside vegetation, can shield pedestrians from pollution. Children in prams are more exposed to traffic pollution than adults, as they are closer to the level of vehicle exhaust pipes. Pram covers can reduce infants’ exposure by up to 39%.

Of course, the best way to reduce air pollution from traffic is to have fewer vehicles on our roads, and cleaner fuel and engines.

In the meantime, we hope our low-cost technology will prompt citizen scientists to develop their own sensors, producing the data we need to breathe easy in city streets.

Read more: Even for an air pollution historian like me, these past weeks have been a shock

– ref. Air quality near busy Australian roads up to 10 times worse than official figures – https://theconversation.com/air-quality-near-busy-australian-roads-up-to-10-times-worse-than-official-figures-137227

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Beattie, Associate Professor of Law and Criminology, CQUniversity Australia

Before we lived with the reality of a global disease outbreak, Pandemic was just the title of a popular series of board games. In the time leading up to the lockdown, game stores noted interest in the Pandemic games had increased.

Games in the series have been regular fixtures in the Amazon board games top ten lists for a decade and Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is second on the BoardGameGeek user rankings. Australian sales have reportedly surged since isolation began.

Why have players turned towards a game about the very thing they are seeking to avoid in real life? Pandemic is providing more than entertainment – helping players think through problems creatively, focus, adapt and reflect on serious issues.

Since ancient times

Ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote the earliest games were created to help people cope with long term woes.

In the reign of Atys the son of Manes their king there came to be a grievous dearth over the whole of Lydia; and the Lydians for a time continued to endure it, but afterwards, as it did not cease, they sought for remedies; and one devised one thing and another of them devised another thing. And then were discovered, they say, the ways of playing with the dice and the knucklebones and the ball … These games they invented as a resource against the famine … on one of the days they would play games all the time in order that they might not feel the want of food, and on the next they ceased from their games and had food: and thus they went on for 18 years.

We invoke this history when we take the benefits of board games seriously and understand the skills they can cultivate.

These benefits can include coping and well-being skills developed from games’ social problem solving experiences. The Victorian government is even interested in looking at how “gamification” can provide specific health gains, for example, using consoles to motivate physical rehabilitation exercises or using games to test kids’ hearing.

Much of the research has focussed on video games such as Minecraft, but the recent rise in popularity of board games means these too deserve closer attention.

Games such as Pandemic have led a resurgence in board gaming as an adult pastime, bolstered by a desire for authentic social experiences, disenchantment with online gaming (and trolls) and the proliferation of board game cafes.

Playing Pandemic

Pandemic was created by Matt Leacock, a former Chicago graphic designer who developed the idea after the SARS epidemic of 2003. The first Pandemic game was published in 2008 and was at the crest of the wave of new board games for adults. It is a game for 2–4 players and can be completed within an hour.

The game creator has said part of the game’s appeal is the way it “offers escalating moments of hope and fear that really draw you and your team in”.

There are no dice involved although there is a randomised deck of cards that models the spread of the viruses across a global map. Significantly it is a cooperative game where the players must work together against the game, to collectively make hard decisions about strategy. Each turn requires an allocation of limited resources – to stop outbreaks, create research centres, research a cure or focus on global mobility.

Though there are no official rules for doing so, some discussion boards outline ways to play Pandemic solo – making it ideal for isolation.

Back in the official version, players take on the roles of different specialists, including the scientist, the medic, the dispatcher and others. Each of these roles provides a specific power that allows them to break the rules of the game in an interesting way, giving each member of the team a distinctive niche, encouraging plenty of replay in order to find out how they all work.

While not the first cooperative game, it led the demand for new non-adversarial games. The popularity also came from the contemporary theme that appeals to a broader audience outside of fandom communities; there are no wizards or spaceships on the box art. Pandemic has been used in training settings and can be a useful way to introduce epidemiology in the classroom and challenge conventional ideas about globalised systems.

Expansion sets (additional cards and components bought separately) add more complexity, new roles and tougher viruses. There are standalone variants that use the game’s escalation models to challenge barbarian hordes attacking ancient Rome, battle rising floodwaters of industrial age Holland and even counter the sinister rise of Cthulhu cultists.

The most significant variant is the Pandemic Legacy games, which takes place in two “seasons” like television drama. Each Legacy season is made up of a series of games where events and consequences carry over to the next. Legacy games involve permanent changes to the board, introduction of new game elements and even asking the players to tear up certain cards.

Why now?

So why, when confronted with the reality of a pandemic would we be reassured by a game that eerily foreshadowed COVID-19? It’s not like the game trivialises the problem. Pandemic presents problems as complex, requiring changing strategies but ultimately presents a solution via cooperation and clever planning.

Playing the game at home might provide a chance at creating order out of a crisis. We can feel reassured wicked problems require evolving strategies, setbacks may be temporary and provide routes to more creative solutions. Games provide a safe environment in which to manage complex systems and deal with ill-defined problems.

The popularity of games such as Pandemic have led to the creation of new games with serious themes and spaces for creative problem solving. The King’s Dilemma explores complex ramifications of political dealmongering. Holding On: the Troubled Life of Billy Kerr looks at palliative care.

Whether we play them as families and roommates, via video conferencing, or tabletop simulators, board games can help us distract ourselves from the isolation of lockdowns and social distancing, but they also have potential to make us think about the challenges our world is facing.

As for Pandemic creator Matt Leacock, he’s working on a possible game about the climate crisis. Stay tuned.

– ref. Playing Pandemic – the hit board game about the very thing we’re trying to avoid – https://theconversation.com/playing-pandemic-the-hit-board-game-about-the-very-thing-were-trying-to-avoid-137009

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Morrison, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology

As lockdowns are relaxed around the world and people return to their workplaces, the next challenge will be adapting open office spaces to the new normal of strict personal hygiene and physical distancing.

While the merits and disadvantages of open plan and flexible workspaces have long been debated, the risk they posed of allowing dangerous, highly contagious viruses to spread was rarely (if ever) considered.

But co-working spaces are characterised by shared areas and amenities with surfaces that need constant cleaning. Droplets from a single sneeze can travel over 7 metres, and surfaces within pods or booths, designed for privacy, could remain hazardous for days.

Even in countries such as Australia and New Zealand where efforts to “flatten the curve” have been successful and which have relatively easily controlled borders, it’s fair to ask whether communal workspaces might be a thing of the past.

Perhaps – if vigilant measures are in place – some countries can continue to embrace collaborative, flexible, activity-based workplace designs and the cost savings they represent. But this is unlikely to be the case in general in the coming years. Even if some organisations can operate with minimal risk there will be an expectation they provide virus-free workplaces should there be future outbreaks.

Working from home

Worldwide, there will undoubtedly be fewer people in the office – now workers have tried working from home, they may find they like it. And organisations may have little choice but to limit the numbers of workers on-site. Staggered shifts, enforced flexitime, and 24/7 operations may become the norm, along with working remotely.

The open plan model has been criticised for everything from lowered productivity, less interpersonal interaction, antisocial behaviour, reduced well-being, too much distraction, a lack of privacy, and making workers feel exposed and monitored.

Read more: Get out of my face! We’re more antisocial in a shared office space

But it has also been shown to improve cooperation and communication. Whether these innovative spaces are within a large organisation or are communal workspaces where start-ups, freelancers, and contractors can sit together (such as GridAKL in Auckland or The Commons in Sydney), their popularity is undeniable. The sense of community and the ability to share knowledge and ideas are key attractions of co-working.

Read more: Open plan offices CAN actually work, under certain conditions

Riding the shared/flexi-space wave have been companies such as WeWork – popularising communal tables within co-working hubs and providing “pods” for private conversations. But there is now little doubt WeWork will be an early casualty of COVID-19. Already in financial trouble before the pandemic, WeWork will cut more than 1,000 jobs this month.

But what about the thousands of organisations that retooled their densely populated work environments to encourage flexibility, activity-based work, and movement within and between spaces?

James Muir, CEO of sustainability start-up Crunch and Flourish has no doubt using co-working offices in central Auckland has been a positive: “We benefited from the great community at GridAKL,” he says. “And before long we were collaborating with other start-ups on marketing and design as well as getting great advice from more experienced entrepreneurs.”

Missing social cues online

Those fortuitous conversations and information exchanges will inevitably become rarer as we avoid the risk of interpersonal contact – and they are almost impossible to mimic online. Personal interaction (even within the office) will be replaced with the already familiar virtual video meeting – or even, as TIME magazine reports, holograms and avatars.

Read more: How women’s life-long experiences of being judged by their appearance affect how they feel in open-plan offices

However, communication is more challenging when conducted remotely. We are more persuasive in person, particularly if we know the person. Being on a video call is more draining than a face-to-face chat because workers must concentrate harder to process non-verbal cues such as tone of voice and body language. Anxiety about technology is another barrier, and some find lack of eye contact in virtual meetings (mimicked by staring at the “dot” of your own camera) disquieting.

New norms of hand sanitising, cleaning equipment and wearing masks will emerge. Handshaking or friendly pecks on the cheek may soon be things of the past, as will family photos and mementos on desks, if they prove too difficult to sanitise.

Aside from behaviours, policies, and attitudes, the physical office will need to change. Already, a company in the Netherlands has coined the term the “6 feet office”, aiming to redesign workspaces to help workers maintain social distancing at work.

We may even see the return of the high-walled cubicle, and the introduction of wide corridors and one-way foot traffic, already found in some hospitals. Activity-based work and hot-desks (which oblige people to move throughout the day) could be replaced by assigned desk arrangements where workers sit back to back.

New builds might incorporate touch-free technology such as voice-activated lifts, doors and cabinets, touchless sinks and soap dispensers, improved air venting and UV lights to disinfect surfaces overnight.

In the meantime, will James Muir resume running Crunch and Flourish from his co-working office after the pandemic? “Yes,” he says, “once the risk of any new cases is under control.”

– ref. Goodbye to the crowded office: how coronavirus will change the way we work together – https://theconversation.com/goodbye-to-the-crowded-office-how-coronavirus-will-change-the-way-we-work-together-137382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sophie Lewis, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW

Many Australians, especially those experiencing financial hardship due to COVID-19, are asking whether they can afford to keep their private health insurance.

Others don’t know if they should drop or downgrade their cover, especially if they cannot or don’t want to access services they’ve paid for.

Now consumer group Choice is recommending people think about dropping extras cover, dropping or downgrading hospital cover and asking their insurance company for hardship considerations, which include waiving premiums or suspending their policy.

What options do you have? And what are the implications of dropping or downgrading your cover?

Read more: Do you really need private health insurance? Here’s what you need to know before deciding

What services can I use?

Our research shows people take out private health insurance because of shorter waiting times for elective surgery, choice of doctor or hospital, access to a private hospital room, and extras like dental and physiotherapy services.

Although some elective surgeries are due to resume this week, it’s unclear how long it will take hospitals to clear the backlog, which surgeries will be performed and where. This raises questions about whether consumers will be able to access the benefits they value in having private health insurance.

Read more: What elective surgery will be allowed now the coronavirus situation has improved? It’s up to your surgeon or hospital

While a key reason for taking out private health insurance is to avoid waiting times, people may now have to wait while hospitals and health care providers resume a staged approach to resuming elective surgery and general treatments impacted by the pandemic.

People may also be worried about whether they will receive the care they need if they have COVID-19. However, they should be assured that emergency treatment will be provided through the public system. Many private health insurance companies will also now cover COVID-19 related treatments.

How are private insurers responding?

Modelling by the Australia Institute shows private health insurers could make considerable savings due to a reduction in claims paid to, or on behalf of, consumers during the pandemic.

This is because services, such as elective surgery, and general treatments, such as dental services, are not available or are limited. And it recommends some of these savings should be passed on to policy holders.

Private health insurance companies have assured consumers that any increase in premiums will be delayed by at least six months.

They have also said that some funds resulting from the cancellation of elective surgery or allied health services will be returned to customers. It isn’t clear, though, how this will be done and over what period.

What options do I have?

It’s not surprising if you’re confused about whether to keep, drop or downgrade your private health insurance.

Our research consistently shows consumers find changing private health cover confusing. Increasing costs of premiums, value for money and difficulties understanding policies are common concerns. People aren’t certain what they need cover for, what is a reasonable price to pay, and how much difference there is between the public and private systems.

Read more: Confused about your private health insurance coverage? You’re not alone

If you are thinking about downgrading your hospital cover or stopping extras cover, think about what services you may need in the future.

Remember that if you downgrade your hospital cover to a lower level of cover some services may be excluded (for instance, pregnancy). If you decide to increase your level of hospital cover in the future you may also need to re-serve waiting periods for those services excluded at the lower level of cover.

If you drop your hospital cover and take it up again in the future, you may pay more due to the Lifetime health cover loading (if you do not take private health insurance up again within 1,094 days of dropping your cover).

Choice is also recommending people drop their extras cover. But your decision about this will depend on the types of services you typically use.

If you decide to drop your extras cover, you may also be required to re-serve waiting periods if you take up extras again in the future.

This means you may need to wait two months for general dental services or physiotherapy, but 12 months for major dental procedures. However these waiting periods vary according to procedure and insurer. So to find out what waiting periods apply, ask your health fund.

If you are experiencing financial hardship you may be able to ask your fund to temporarily waive your premiums or suspend your policy. However, you won’t be covered while your health insurance is suspended.

What happens after the coronavirus?

The pandemic highlights issues with Australia’s health-care system, and how private health insurance operates and is funded.

There has been much critique of government policy encouraging Australians to take out private health insurance, and in particular the subsidising of premiums through the private health insurance rebate.

Read more: Elective surgery’s due to restart next week so now’s the time to fix waiting lists once and for all

At a time when more consumers are experiencing financial hardship they will question the value of their private health insurance even more than before.

There may be other ways of providing health-care, including fixing waiting lists, that meet the needs of all Australians, while retaining the best aspects of both public and private care.

As decisions about whether to change your private health insurance depend on your personal circumstances, please discuss your options and their implications with your health fund or read the fine print on policy documents.

For independent advice and consumer resources, see the government’s private health insurance website, health department website or consumer organisation websites such as Consumers Health Forum of Australia or Choice.

– ref. Should I drop my private health insurance during the pandemic? – https://theconversation.com/should-i-drop-my-private-health-insurance-during-the-pandemic-137156

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Wilkins, Professorial Fellow and Deputy Director (Research), HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne

JobKeeper is by “no means perfect”. Treasury Secretary Stephen Kennedy used those exact words when he appeared before a Senate committee on COVID-19 on Tuesday, going on to observe that getting it right would “require continuous work”.

We have dug into the JobKeeper numbers to work out how it could be improved.

The Morrison government announced JobKeeper on March 30. For a cost of A$130 billion, employers of eligible workers in eligible businesses will receive a flat $1,500 per fortnight wage subsidy for up to six months, irrespective of the worker’s previous wage.

The most striking insight from those figures is the number of workers that are expected to receive the payment – more than 6.6 million, six out of every ten private sector workers.

It doesn’t quite jell with another number – the number of workers treasury expects JobKeeper to keep in work.

We can get an idea of this from Treasurer Frydenberg’s statement on April 14 that “treasury estimates the unemployment rate would be 5 percentage points higher without JobKeeper.”

The labour force is 13.7 million. Allowing for the fact that some of the workers who lose jobs will withdraw from the labour market and not be counted as unemployed, the implication is that JobKeeper will save, at most, one million jobs.

Payments to 6.6 million, to save 1 million

Put crudely, JobKeeper will go to 6.6 million Australians in order to save the jobs of around one million

Of course, it is also designed to benefit workers who lose hours but are still employed. Taking this into account explains only some of the difference.

Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe expects total hours worked to fall by around 20% over the first half of the year, 2.6 million full time jobs’ worth. That is a long way short of 6.6 million.

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

It isn’t surprising that coverage of JobKeeper is broader than predicted job loss. That was inherent in the design. What is surprising is the size of gap between the predicted number of payments and the predicted number of jobs at risk. This has three important implications.

1. Mutual obligation

If JobKeeper does end up being paid in the name of 6.6 million Australians rather than the one million or so that would need it to stay in work, it will be a substantial subsidy to business. Many businesses will have received $1500 per fortnight for workers they would have kept on anyway.

This can be justified as a means of putting those businesses on a stronger footing to stay afloat during the shutdown and expand when it is over, maintaining high employment into the future. But such support comes with an obligation. Businesses that receive this sort of wage subsidy are implicitly entering into a contract with the community to maintain employment when JobSeeker ends. This commitment should be made explicit.

2. Investigation

The incredibly rapid onset of COVID-19 means the eligibility criteria for JobKeeper are based on changes in monthly revenue. Any other approach would have delayed payments. But using revenue as a trigger provides an incentive for businesses to manipulate month-to-month revenue.

That makes it imperative that JobKeeper scheme is accompanied by substantial monitoring. One way to do it is by cross-referencing claims for JobKeeper with other data on the impact of COVID-19.

As an example, the chart below compares the actual size of falls in employment by industry between mid March and early April with shares of inquiries to the Tax office about JobKeeper by industry. Some industries appear to be outliers – with relatively high shares of inquiries but relatively small job losses.

Job lost versus inquiries about JobKeeper by industry

The chart is rudimentary.

It shows the accommodation and food services industry lost the most jobs, but nowhere near the most inquires about JobKeeper.

The most were in the professional, scientific and technical services industry, which lost nowhere near as many jobs.

As time goes on, it should be possible to monitor claims in ways that are more sophisticated.

3. Scope to extend JobKeeper

Forecasts – even those based on the most relevant and up-to-date information – can be wrong. This isn’t a criticism. Making forecasts is hard.

But it might be that 6.6 million turns out to be an overestimate. If so, it creates an opportunity.

Read more: Why temporary migrants need JobKeeper

It would allow JobKeeper to be extended to some of the workers who at present miss out, among them casual employees in their job for less than 12 months and the temporary visa holders who are currently excluded.

Such a change would be consistent with the stated goal of trying to keep workers connected to their workforce. It will be needed when the crisis is over, and it would be the right thing to do for equity, ensuring there is a safety net for all of us.

The treasury secretary is correct. JobKeeper should be anything but set and forget.

– ref. That estimate of 6.6 million Australians on JobKeeper, it tells us how it can be improved – https://theconversation.com/that-estimate-of-6-6-million-australians-on-jobkeeper-it-tells-us-how-it-can-be-improved-137237

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

Labor’s Katy Gallagher is chair of the Senate committee that will assess the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, both its economic and health challenges. It is set for the deep dive, having a final reporting date of mid-2022.

With parliament currently sitting only in fits and starts, Gallagher considers the committee a “key accountability vehicle”.

“We don’t want political grandstanding, we don’t want long winded political arguments, there are other forums for those,” she says.

“We do expect public servants and ministers to attend with information and provide information. I don’t want it to be turned into one of those committees that we see so often where we ask questions and the officials at the table work out how not to answer them”

The committee’s role will be “to explore why decisions were taken and provide that conduit back to the public.”

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Mick Tsikas/AAP

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Katy Gallagher on the Senate’s coronavirus watchdog – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-katy-gallagher-on-the-senates-coronavirus-watchdog-137484

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cris Brack, Associate Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

Are you feeling anxious or irritated during the coronavirus lockdown? Do you constantly want to get up and move? Maybe you need a moment to engage with nature.

Getting into the great outdoors is difficult at right now. But our research soon to be published in Australian Forestry shows you can improve your mood by experiencing nature indoors. This could mean placing few pot plants in the corner of your home office, or even just looking at photos of plants.

Our work adds to a compelling body of research that shows being around nature directly benefits our mental health.

Biophilia

Public gardens and parks, street verges with trees and bushes, and even rooftop gardens bring us a broad range of benefits – boosting physical health, reducing air pollution, and even lowering crime rates.

Read more: Biodiversity and our brains: how ecology and mental health go together in our cities

But inside, in your hastily constructed home office or home school room, you may be unable to take full advantage of urban nature.

Embracing the notion of “biophilia” – the innate human affinity with nature – while locked down inside may improve your productivity and even your health.

The biophilia hypothesis argues modern day humans evolved from hundreds of generations of ancestors whose survival required them to study, understand and rely on nature. So a disconnection from nature today can cause significant issues for humans, such as a decline in psychological health.

In practice at home, connecting with nature might mean having large windows overlooking the garden. You can also improve working conditions by having natural materials in your office or school room, such as wooden furniture, natural stones and pot plants.

Indoor plants

Our research has demonstrated that even a small number of plants hanging in pockets on along a busy corridor provide enough nature to influence our physiological and psychological perceptions.

These plants even caused behavioural differences, where people would change their route through a building to come into contact with the indoor plants.

We surveyed 104 people, and 40% of the respondents reported their mood and emotions improved in the presence of indoor plants.

They felt “relaxed and grounded” and “more interested”. The presence of indoor greenery provides a place to “relax from routine” and it made the space “significantly more pleasant to work in”.

As one person reported:

When I first saw the plants up on the wall brought a smile to my face.

Whenever I walk down the stairs or walk past I mostly always feel compelled to look at the plants on the wall. Not with any anxiety or negative thoughts, rather, at how pleasant and what a great idea it is.

Looking at wildlife photography

Our research also explored whether viewing images, posters or paintings of nature would make a difference.

We photographed the plants from viewpoints similar to those the corridor users experienced. Survey responses from those who only viewed these digital images were almost the same as those who experienced them in real life.

While we can’t say for sure, we can hypothesise that given the importance of vision in modern humans, an image that “looks” like nature might be enough to trigger a biophilic response.

Read more: We know contact with nature makes you feel better. Can virtual contact do the same?

However, physically being in the presence of plants did have some stronger behavioural effects. For example corridor users wanted to linger longer looking at the plants than those who viewed the photographs, and were more likely to want to visit the plants again. Maybe the other senses – touch, smell, even sound – created a stronger biophilic response than just sight alone.

So the good news is if you can’t get to a nursery – or if you have a serious inability to keep plants alive – you can still benefit from looking at photographs of them.

If you haven’t been taking your own photos, search the plethora of images from wildlife photographers such as Doug Gimesy, Frans Lanting and Tanya Stollznow.

Or check out live camera feeds of a wide range of environments, and travel to far-flung places without leaving the safety of home.

While we haven’t tested the mood-boosting effects of live videos, we hypothesise their physiological and psychological effects will be no different than digital photographs.

Here are seven places to help you get started.

• The Bush Blitz citizen science app launched a new online tool today. The species recovery program encourages children to explore their backyard to identify different species.

• “From the bottom of the sea direct to your screen”: watch this underwater live stream of Victoria’s rocky reef off Port Phillip Bay

• The Coastal Watch website offers live camera feeds on beaches around Australia.

• Watch the running water, trees and occasional fauna in California’s Redwood Forest River.

• In pastoral Australia, go on a four-hour drive through the country side along tree-lined roads.

• Zoos Victoria has set up live cameras that show its animals in natural (and nature-like) environments from Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo.

• Yellowstone National Park may be closed right now, but webcams are stationed in various locations throughout the park.

Read more: The science is in: gardening is good for you

– ref. Can’t go outside? Even seeing nature on a screen can improve your mood – https://theconversation.com/cant-go-outside-even-seeing-nature-on-a-screen-can-improve-your-mood-135320