Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maximilian de Courten, Professor in Global Public Health and Director of the Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

The Tokyo Olympics are less than three weeks away. And the pressure is on for the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Japan was just coming out of its fourth COVID-19 wave with about 1,400 new cases every day, but numbers are now rising again. This could turn into a fifth wave.

Despite this, the games will go ahead. There will be limited numbers of local spectators allowed in venues filled up to 50% capacity. This means 10,000 spectators wearing masks at all times and who are not allow to shout or cheer.

But these 10,000 spectators may be the least of the organisers’ worries.

About 90,000 international athletes, support teams and journalists are expected to arrive in Japan ahead of the games. And it is almost certain some will bring in the coronavirus.

Even full vaccination and pre-departure virus testing will not prevent this, as the recent COVID case in one Ugandan team member showed. Now an athlete from that team, who was also vaccinated before departing, has caught the highly infectious Delta variant.

The issue is then how to ensure those who bring the virus into Tokyo don’t spread it among other athletes and support crew, and consequently spread it among the Japanese population, which remains largely unvaccinated.

Currently only around 23% of the Japanese population have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine. This is despite a recent increase in the vaccine rollout over the past two months.

This low coverage is insufficient to protect the population. It’s also below the vaccination rates across Asia and Australia.

There is also concern that when internationals depart, they’ll take infections back to their home countries.

The Tokyo Games organisers are keen for the vaccine rollout to press on for people involved with the games. But they don’t provide details of how they can guarantee two vaccine doses will be administered with the required delay between the first and second dose.

There are also no details of whether vaccination plans include accommodation staff, drivers, media and over 110,000 volunteers who may come into contact with arriving participants.

Read more:
Olympic athletes speak up: current COVID plans aren’t enough to keep them safe

Aerosol transmission

Let’s go back to be the core problem: how to prevent the spread among the participating athletes.

One of the hard lessons Australia has realised is the spread of the virus through aerosols at quarantine hotels, infecting others across corridors when people never come into direct or close contact.

These very fine aerosol particles can sufficiently transmit infections to people more than 2 metres away, and in some cases to people who have passed through that space soon after the infectious person left.

As with Australian quarantine hotels that are not built to withstand aerosol transmissions, Tokyo’s Olympic accommodation and training facilities were designed and constructed before COVID-19. So they are also not designed to prevent aerosol transmission.

Then, there were condoms…

Then there’s what may seem a trivial and cheeky statistic. Some 160,000 free condoms were set to be distributed at the Tokyo games.

While condoms have been distributed at past games, this time the “safe sex” message seemed at odds with instructions for athletes to “ avoid unnecessary forms of contact”.

Despite reassurances these condoms were intended for use after the games when athletes return home, rather than during it, try telling that to athletes across the hall from each other in Tokyo. The Olympic Village could become a 24/7 site of superspreading.

Now, the Tokyo organisers say they will distribute the condoms as athletes are leaving the games, not during it. This may be a masterstroke of preventing COVID at the Olympics. However, participants will still be able to drink alcohol in their rooms. Let’s see what that does to social distancing.

It is hard to argue even the third and most recent version of the IOC’s playbook, which instructs athletes and officials on how to enjoy a safe games, will prevent human nature from taking charge.

A work in progress

The rules about what athletes and officials can and can’t do at the games to limit the spread of COVID-19 are constantly being revised.

Researchers and scientists have heavily criticised the previous version of the IOC’s playbook as not being built on scientifically rigorous risk assessment. They say it failed to consider how exposure to the coronavirus occurs, the factors contributing to exposure, and which participants may be at highest risk, including some competing at the Paralympics. We don’t yet know what they think of the updated version.

The Tokyo Games will go ahead. The Olympic brand cannot afford to do without them. But the collateral damage is likely to be significant.

Maximilian de Courten is the director of the Mitchell Institute a Think Tank for Education and Health Policy.

Hans Westerbeek is Professor of International Sport Business and Head of the Sport Business Insights Group at Victoria University.

– ref. Condoms, vaccines and sport: how the Tokyo Olympics is sending mixed messages about COVID-19 safety – https://theconversation.com/condoms-vaccines-and-sport-how-the-tokyo-olympics-is-sending-mixed-messages-about-covid-19-safety-163361

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

Following her pre-selection victory, Alice Springs deputy mayor Jacinta Nampijinpa Price will now be the Country Liberal party’s Senate candidate at the election.

This essentially assures her of victory. The Northern Territory returns one Senate seat to each side of politics.

Price has made a name for herself already as a conservative Indigenous voice, critical of what she labels a paternalistic approach to Aboriginal autonomy. She is also well known for her advocacy work – bringing attention to high rates of domestic violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Her stances on a range of issues have made her a controversial figure within the broad Indigenous community.

In discussing her political agenda, Price highlights affording traditional owners the ability to create business opportunities and own homes on their own land.

“A lot of traditional owners, and in my own experience as a traditional owner, have not had the opportunity to be able to access their own country for economic development opportunities and, and/or have the opportunity to own their own homes.”

Price doesn’t consider constitutional recognition for Indigenous peoples a policy priority, favouring instead “practical measures that are going to generate outcomes.”

“I certainly don’t mind the idea of being recognised in our nation’s constitution[…][but] I’m more focused on the more immediate, practical issues, trying to provide outcomes for the betterment of Indigenous Australians, as opposed to, you know, symbolic gestures.”

Nor does she call herself “a fan of” the voice to parliament, a proposal which would give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders a say in law and policy affecting them.

“I think we do have Indigenous voices in parliament – I guess it’s upon them who have been there already to actually be doing a better job[…]if we need a voice to parliament, then clearly that’s saying something about the representatives who have been there already.”

“If we’re reaching for equality, true equality, then that means that Indigenous Australians be on the same footing as all other Australians”

Additional audio

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

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Jacinta Price’s parliamentary agenda – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-jacinta-prices-parliamentary-agenda-163884

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yasmine Musharbash, Senior Lecturer and Head of Anthropology, Australian National University

The monsters we are familiar with from books, films and TV have long been analysed by scholars as metaphors capturing what ails society. Think of how different types of zombies stand for fears about racial tensions, nuclear destruction, rampant capitalism, contagion, migration and so forth.

The monsters that haunt people off the screen or pages of a book can be found anywhere. All societies and cultures have concepts of, and often deep beliefs in, monsters. In the USA, religious scholars found that in “a strictly numerical sense, people who do not believe in anything paranormal are the odd people out”.

Indigenous Australia is rich in monsters. Some exist in both the realm of stories and in people’s daily lives. One such example are Hairypeople. Much stronger and hairier than humans, it is believed that, since time immemorial, they have lived their lives alongside Indigenous Australians.

Curiosity and intimacy

They made their TV debut as Hairies in the TV series Cleverman (2016-17). In the series, Hairies come into the dystopian city, where they are hunted down, institutionalised, incarcerated and tortured (much like Indigenous people were in the past).

Read more:
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The Hairies are wonderful examples of what anthropologist Faye Ginsburg calls the “Indigenous uncanny”. She contrasts this with the uncanny Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, associated with fear. The Indigenous uncanny, she says,

is characterised by a different register […] shaped by a kind of curiosity about and intimacy with the other side.

Hairypeople are one of the few pan-Australian monsters. It seems they are known in one guise or another and under one or another name across the continent. (Yowie and Yahoo are two of the better known names).

In central Australia’s Tanami Desert, the traditional lands of Warlpiri people, Hairypeople are known as Pangkarlangu. Much like the Hairies in Cleverman, and in ways not dissimilar to zombies in movies, Pangkarlangu in the Tanami Desert are expressive of social concerns — across both time and space.

In the past, and in myths and songs, Pangkarlangu were understood as human-like but uncivilised. They did not perform ceremonies nor bury their dead. Worst of all, they were cannibals known to hunt and eat other monsters, other Pangkarlangu and humans, especially children.

Changed lives

Strikingly, as the lives of Warlpiri people changed with colonisation, so too did the lives of Pangkarlangu.

To give but one example: in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Warlpiri people were confined to a number of settlements close to (but not in) the Tanami Desert. One was called Lajamanu (back then Hooker Creek) in the northwest.

About 450 kilometres as the crow flies to the southeast, another was called Yuendumu.

Not only is there a vast distance between the two Warlpiri communities, but Lajamanu is on Gurindji country and Yuendumu is on Anmatyere country. This means the inhabitants of each respective community formed close relationships with different peoples and languages.

These new differences were amplified further by Lajamanu orientating towards Katherine and Darwin, in the Top End of the NT, as service centres and Yuendumu towards Alice Springs, in central Australia.

At Lajamanu, as academic Christine Nicholls reports, Pangkarlangu continued to be talked about, they were painted in art, and they were regularly sighted when people went hunting or camping out bush. She describes one group of Warlpiri people “almost stumbling upon” an “an entire family of Pangkarlangu sitting in a circle on the ground having a picnic”. Pangkarlangu, she reports, “seem to be becoming increasingly domesticated, acting a little more like ‘whitefellas’.”

At Yuendumu, on the other hand, for a while at least, they faded into the realm of stories. Until 2013, that is, when a family of Pangkarlangu (a father, a mother and a child) were observed by members of the community — from a distance and over the course of a few days — to be making their way from the southeast towards Yuendumu and then into the Tanami Desert.

A refaunation?

A pervasive way to interpret this event was suggested to me by my Warlpiri friend Kumanjayi Napangardi. She understood the reemergence of the Pangkarlangu from the direction of Alice Springs, and beyond that, the Eastern seaboard, as a kind of refaunation — mirroring the reintroduction of locally extinct species from elsewhere.

Yuendumu is located adjacent to Possum Dreaming (ancestrally linking it to both possums the species and possum ancestors) but possums have been extinct there for decades. Warlpiri people now only encounter possums when they travel to the urban centres of southeastern Australia.

Near Yuendumu, on Warlpiri land, lies Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, a refuge for threatened mammals, including Mala (rufous hare wallaby) from New South Wales. Central Australia not only experiences one of the highest rates of mammalian extinctions — it also is home to a booming refaunation industry. The industry employs rangers, ecologists, biologists and others in caring for, observing and protecting threatened species before releasing them back into the wild.

Given this, why wouldn’t a formerly extinct monster return?

The phenomena of the Pangkarlangu at Lajamanu and at Yuendumu show us the monster heralds change as well as changing itself.

Yasmine Musharbash received funding from the Australian Research Council (FT130100415)

– ref. Same monster, different meanings: how Indigenous ideas about the Pangkarlangu Hairypeople have changed – https://theconversation.com/same-monster-different-meanings-how-indigenous-ideas-about-the-pangkarlangu-hairypeople-have-changed-160004

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW

National cabinet’s decision to halve the number of international arrivals to Australia is yet another blow to the 34,000 Australians overseas trying to return home.

But it is also far more than that. As international law scholars, our view is this latest move — 18 months into the pandemic — contravenes Australians’ right to enter their country.

Back in the 1950s, Australia was keenly involved in the drafting of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — one of two core human rights treaties. The treaty was signed by the Whitlam Labor government and then ratified by the Fraser Liberal government in 1980. This voluntary act committed Australia to abide by its provisions as a matter of international law.

One of its provisions clearly states:

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.

The Australian government is relying on this provision — namely, the notion of “arbitrarily” — to justify the travel bans and caps during COVID-19. But is this lawful?

The history of the ‘right to enter’

The treaty was drafted by representatives from a number of United Nations member countries in the late 1940s and 50s, before being considered more widely by the General Assembly.

Our research into the drafting history of the “right to enter” provision reveals just how narrowly it was intended to be construed. And — most significantly — it shows the drafters considered it should never be used to exclude residents from returning on health grounds.

As the United Kingdom’s representative explained at a session in 1959,

it was inconceivable that a state should prohibit one of its nationals, who held a valid passport, from entering its territory for miscellaneous reasons and, in particular, for reasons of health or morality. Restrictions of that kind would be unprecedented and completely unjustified. Such steps could be taken with respect to foreigners or stateless persons but not with respect to nationals.

The Italian representative similarly stressed:

[it] was not really necessary for an individual to be debarred from re-entering his country for health or morality reasons, for there were other methods of keeping him from contaminating his fellow citizens [such as quarantine].

Approaching the issue from a slightly different perspective, the French and Lebanese delegates had argued a decade earlier:

a country was not entitled to foist its nationals on to other countries, particularly on grounds of disease.

Interestingly, the drafting records show that arbitrary deprivation of the right to return was intended as shorthand for a single exception – namely, the exclusion of individuals who had been lawfully exiled.

The exception for exile had been part of earlier drafts, but was ultimately removed because the practice was considered archaic and inappropriate in a human rights treaty. Instead, the word “arbitrarily” became its proxy.

An arbitrary restriction

In light of this background, Australia’s travel caps look like an arbitrary restriction on Australians’ right to come home.

Even taking a broad interpretation, the right to enter could only reasonably be curtailed by brief, temporary restrictions that pursue a legitimate objective and are necessary, reasonable, proportionate, and based on clear legal criteria.

Importantly, the federal government would need to show there were no other, less restrictive measures that can be taken to safeguard public health — such as quarantine. In 1999, the UN Human Rights Committee noted:

there are few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable.

It is currently considering a claim by two Australians stranded overseas, and has requested Australia take interim measures to “avoid irreparable damage” to them — a call the government has rejected.

Read more:
Should Aussies stranded overseas go to the United Nations for help to get home?

Alternatives to travel caps

Over the past year, Australian public health experts have been pushing for the expansion of national quarantine facilities beyond those at Howard Springs. This was also a recommendation of former health department secretary Jane Halton’s report to the government last year.

Numerous health experts have also supported the idea of home quarantine for some returning international travellers.

Read more:
The crisis in India is a terrifying example of why we need a better way to get Australians home

National cabinet’s decision to halve the number of incoming travellers does not address these calls. Rather, it caves to demands by some state premiers.

We now have a virtually unprecedented situation in which the states are controlling Australia’s international border settings, and thousands of Australian citizens and residents — many of whom are vaccinated — continue to live in arbitrary exile.

Jane McAdam receives funding from the Australian Research Council, including for a project examining internal border controls during epidemics.

Regina Jefferies is an Affiliate of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.

– ref. Why the latest travel caps look like an arbitrary restriction on Australians’ right to come home – https://theconversation.com/why-the-latest-travel-caps-look-like-an-arbitrary-restriction-on-australians-right-to-come-home-161882

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona R Martin, Associate Professor in Convergent and Online Media, University of Sydney

If like many Australian Muslims you have reported hate speech to Facebook and received an automated response saying it doesn’t breach the platform’s community standards, you are not alone.

We and our team are the first Australian social scientists to receive funding through Facebook’s content policy research awards, which we used to investigate hate speech on LGBTQI+ community pages in five Asian countries: India, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia.

We looked at three aspects of hate speech regulation in the Asia Pacific region over 18 months. First we mapped hate speech law in our case study countries, to understand how this problem might be legally countered. We also looked at whether Facebook’s definition of “hate speech” included all recognised forms and contexts for this troubling behaviour.

In addition, we mapped Facebook’s content regulation teams, speaking to staff about how the company’s policies and procedures worked to identify emerging forms of hate.

Even though Facebook funded our study, it said for privacy reasons it could not give us access to a dataset of the hate speech it removes. We were therefore unable to test how effectively its in-house moderators classify hate.

Instead, we captured posts and comments from the top three LGBTQI+ public Facebook pages in each country, to look for hate speech that had either been missed by the platform’s machine intelligence filters or human moderators.

Admins feel let down

We interviewed the administrators of these pages about their experience of moderating hate, and what they thought Facebook could do to help them reduce abuse.

They told us Facebook would often reject their reports of hate speech, even when the post clearly breached its Community Standards. In some cases messages that were originally removed would be re-posted on appeal.

Most page admins said the so-called “flagging” process rarely worked, and they found it disempowering. They wanted Facebook to consult with them more to get a better idea of the types of abuse they see posted and why they constitute hate speech in their cultural context.

Read more:
Revenge of the moderators: Facebook’s online workers are sick of being treated like bots

Defining hate speech is not the problem

Facebook has long had a problem with the scale and scope of hate speech on its platform in Asia. For example, while it has banned some Hindu extremists, it has left their pages online.

However, during our study we were pleased to see that Facebook did broaden its definition of hate speech, which now captures a wider range of hateful behaviour. It also explicitly recognises that what happens online can trigger offline violence.

It’s worth noting in the countries we focused on, “hate speech” is seldom precisely legally prohibited. We found other regulations such as cybersecurity or religious tolerance laws could be used to act against hate speech, but instead tended to be used to suppress political dissent.

We concluded that Facebook’s problem is not in defining hate, but being unable to identify certain types of hate, such as that posted in minority languages and regional dialects. It also often fails to respond appropriately to user reports of hate content.

Where hate was worst

Media reports have shown Facebook struggles to automatically identify hate posted in minority languages. It has failed to provide training materials to its own moderators in local languages, even though many are from Asia Pacific countries where English is not the first language.

In the Philippines and Indonesia in particular, we found LGBTIQ+ groups are exposed to an unacceptable level of discrimination and intimidation. This includes death threats, targeting of Muslims and threats of stoning or beheading.

On Indian pages, Facebook filters failed to capture vomiting emojis posted in response to gay wedding photos, and rejected some very clear reports of vilification.

In Australia, on the other hand, we found no unmoderated hate speech – only other types of insensitive and inappropriate comments. This could indicate less abuse gets posted, or there is more effective English language moderation from either Facebook or page administrators.

Similarly in Myanmar LGBTIQ+ groups experienced very little hate speech. But we are aware Facebook is working hard to reduce hate speech on its platform there, in the wake of it being used to persecute the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Also, it’s likely gender diversity isn’t as volatile a subject in Myanmar as it is in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. In these countries LGBTIQ+ rights are highly politicised.

Facebook has taken some important steps towards tackling hate speech. However we’re concerned COVID-19 has forced the platform to become more reliant on machine moderation. That too at a time when it can only automatically identify hate in around 50 languages – even though thousands are spoken everyday across the region.

What we recommend

Our report to Facebook outlines several key recommendations to help improve its approach to combating hate on its platform. Overall, we have urged the company to convene more regularly with persecuted groups in the region, so it can learn more about hate in their local contexts and languages.

This needs to happen alongside a boost to the numbers of its country policy specialists and in-house moderators with minority language expertise.

Mirroring efforts in Europe, Facebook also needs to develop and publicise its trusted partners channel. This provides visible, official hate speech-reporting partner organisations through which people can directly report hate activities to Facebook during crises such as the Christchurch mosque attacks.

More broadly, we would like to see governments and NGOs cooperate to set up an Asian regional hate speech monitoring trial, similar to one organised by the European Union.

Following the EU example, such an initiative could help identify urgent trends in hate speech across the region, strengthen Facebook’s local reporting partnerships, and reduce the overall incidence of hateful content on Facebook.

Read more:
Why Facebook created its own ‘supreme court’ for judging content – 6 questions answered

Fiona R Martin and Aim Sinpeng from the University of Sydney, together with Katharine Gelber and Kirril Shields from the University of Queensland received Content Policy on Social Media research funding from Facebook. Martin is also a chief investigator on the Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project “Platform Governance: Rethinking Internet Regulation as Media Policy” (DP190100222).

Aim Sinpeng does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Facebook’s failure to pay attention to non-English languages is allowing hate speech to flourish – https://theconversation.com/facebooks-failure-to-pay-attention-to-non-english-languages-is-allowing-hate-speech-to-flourish-163723

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernard Walker, Associate Professor in Organisations and Leadership, University of Canterbury

A crucial delivery of 150,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine has arrived in New Zealand this week, ahead of schedule.

But at the same time, the vaccination of most people living in the Canterbury region has been moved back by at least two months.

For the rest of the country, people in group 4 of the vaccination programme will become eligible by the end of July. But those living in Christchurch – New Zealand’s second-largest city – and the Canterbury region will only get their first vaccine dose from mid-September, at the earliest. The region’s COVID-19 response officer Ralph La Salle encouraged everyone “to be patient”.

It appears one of the reasons for the delays is that the vulnerable group 3 residents in the region are already facing delays, with only 2% vaccinated. While people in group 4 across the country will largely follow the government’s scheduled timeline, the Canterbury region will be left waiting to catch up.

Such regional disparities in the vaccine programme are unacceptable as borders reopen and quarantine-free travel with three Australian states resumes this week.

Being “patient” is the polar opposite of what we need for an effective COVID-19 response. We are still in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and our nearest neighbour Australia has millions of people enduring lockdowns resulting from border failures.

New Zealand was lucky to avoid the same scenario following a weekend visit by an Australian traveller who subsequently tested positive for the delta variant.

Read more:
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Further border failures are highly probable. Compared to Australia’s border control, New Zealand’s system has been estimated to be up to three times more likely to be breached.

A failure to vaccinate raises the risk of expensive lockdowns. From a business perspective, this year’s level 3 lockdown in Auckland cost the country around NZ$240 million per week. Leaving Christchurch unvaccinated for an extended period in this current situation represents a significant threat to the overall economy.

Heightened urgency for vaccination

Vaccination is now a time-critical activity. The delta variant is up to twice as infectious as the original strain and can cause more severe symptoms, with increased rates of hospitalisation and deaths.

The number of people suffering from “long COVID” is also rising. Studies show 37%-61% of people experience ongoing symptoms for months after infection, affecting their ability to work and study.

Leading scientists and health experts are urgently calling for an acceleration of New Zealand’s vaccine rollout, given the heightened risks from new variants and the gradual opening of travel across the country’s borders.

New Zealand residents have already been extremely patient. They have waited, knowing that two thirds of the UK adult population are now fully vaccinated, with US numbers close behind. In contrast, New Zealand sits at 9%, one of the lowest in the OECD.

For the Canterbury District Health Board to delay vaccination even further would appear to be a breach of trust, and a significant failure in caring for its people.

The delays present risks and potentially adverse consequences, not only for the Canterbury region but for New Zealand. The combined economic, health and social costs all highlight the need for all vaccination programmes to get into action immediately, as vaccine stocks become available, and follow central government’s proposed timeline, with a July 28 start.

Vaccination is a government responsibility

There are no indications of a valid reason that would justify a delay for a region such as Canterbury. Although nationwide vaccine supplies have been limited, we are told the latest delivery should supply the intended nationwide rollout.

The benchmark for comparisons is the performance of district health boards in other regions. Many of those with a similar resource base of vaccines and staff are working to the government’s schedule or even exceeding it.

Read more:
At least four in five New Zealanders will have to be vaccinated before border controls can be fully relaxed

The government has overall responsibility for ensuring the vaccination programme proceeds promptly across the country. If the Canterbury District Health Board cannot meet its obligations, then the health minister needs to intervene. A pandemic is not a time for re-living any longstanding feuds between regional health boards and the central ministry of health.

If the problems stem from barriers in the management of the local response, those processes must be remedied. If there is a shortage of funding or other resources, central resources should be made available, urgently. The costs of those interventions would be small compared to the effect of outbreaks on the wider economy and the health of the population.

“Patience” is a euphemism for tolerating delays, but unwarranted regional delays are not something we should accept when confronting COVID-19.

Bernard Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. New Zealand’s second-largest city faces weeks of delays in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-second-largest-city-faces-weeks-of-delays-in-the-covid-19-vaccine-rollout-163877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Kirkland, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

COVID-19 is increasing economic inequality around the world.

On the one hand, the number of people in extreme poverty is on the rise for the first time in decades. The World Bank estimates at least 119 million more people will no longer have access to clean water, food and shelter as a consequence of the pandemic. On the other hand, the wealthy have benefited from a soaring stock market, rising house prices and better job security.

Read more:
COVID-19: how rising inequalities unfolded and why we cannot afford to ignore it

This gap between the rich and the poor is economic inequality – where a small number of individuals own most of the wealth.

Research has revealed much about how economic inequality affects human psychology. For example, people differ in how much they care about unequal wealth distribution. People’s tolerance of inequality usually depends on how fair they believe the economic system to be. If someone believes others deserve what have earned, they think inequality is more acceptable.

Social psychologists have also shown economic inequality affects how we treat others – when things are more unequal, we are much less generous. Importantly, those who think inequality is fair tend to be much less giving towards others.

All this research has so far asked how economic inequality affects adult psychology, but what about children?

Children experience the world differently from adults – they don’t watch the news and debate taxation laws over dinner parties. Despite this, it’s important we understand what children think about economic inequality. The adults that children grow up to be is, to some extent, shaped by their childhood experiences – where they grow up, what their parents think, and who their peers are.

My colleagues and I ran several studies to understand how children experience economic inequality, and how this affects how they treat others.

As you can imagine, asking a child what they think about the economy is difficult.
To overcome this obstacle, we designed a fun, child-friendly experiment in which children played several games with six puppets. During these games, the children and the puppets each gained points over time. But what the children did not know was that we, as experimenters, controlled everything.

Children always got the same number of points (14) and had the same relative placement (fourth place out of seven players). The only thing that changed was the inequality between players – it was either 1) highly unequal, where some puppets got a lot of points, and some got very few, or 2) highly equal, where all puppets got a similar number of points. Children then got 14 stickers to keep in exchange for their 14 points.

Importantly, the points children and puppets received did not clearly match the skill or effort they put in – it was neither meritocratic nor non-meritocratic. We did this on purpose; the way wealth is distributed in real life is not just about who has worked the hardest or who is most skilled. We wanted to mimic this more realistic division of wealth to see how children’s interpretations influenced their behaviour.

We then gave the children extra points to divide among the puppets as they saw fit. Would they try and adjust the outcomes by giving more to the poor? Well, it depends.

Children aged four to six appeared to have an “equality bias” – they gave everyone one point each, even if some were already poor and others were rich. They also didn’t care much about the inequality in the environment; rather, they focused on their own outcomes.

Seven- to nine-year-olds, on the other hand, paid careful attention to how the resources were divided among the puppets. They then gave more to the poor puppets to try to adjust the outcomes.

We also asked children if they thought the points were divided fairly. To our surprise, whether the children experienced high or low inequality did not affect how fair they thought their economic system was. However, the children differed in their personal interpretations – some thought it was based on merit, others thought it was completely unfair, and some felt entirely indifferent – as one child put it, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset”.

Critically, the children who thought the economic situation was unfair were the ones who gave to the poor. This suggests children’s interpretations of inequality, rather than inequality itself, is a strong driver of their care and concern for the poor.

Read more:
Rich and poor don’t recover equally from epidemics. Rebuilding fairly will be a global challenge

As it stands, hundreds of millions of people live on less than $1.90 per day. Most of these people are in this position simply because they were born into a country with poor education, opportunities and standards of living.

The next generation of children will inherit this world. It’s time we understand what they think about it, because what they think dictates what they’ll do to help in the years to come.

Kelly Kirkland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What do children think of economic inequality? We did an experiment to find out – https://theconversation.com/what-do-children-think-of-economic-inequality-we-did-an-experiment-to-find-out-163262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University

Historical anniversaries sometimes – not always – provide an opportunity to take stock. Rarely do two anniversaries coincide that encourage such an opportunity.

That is the case with the 50th anniversary on July 3 of the breakthrough Gough Whitlam visit to China and the July 1 centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CCP).

Australia needs to take stock of a troubled relationship with its dominant trading partner and guarantor of its economic well-being.

The two anniversaries, within a few days of each other, should remind us of both the costs and benefits of a complex relationship, and indeed the challenges and threats.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech marking the July 1 centenary of the founding of the CCP in Shanghai by a group of leftist intellectuals could hardly have been more confrontational.

We will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.

By any standards, this was a nationalistic and xenophobic speech designed for domestic consumption. But it was also aimed directly at the United States and its allies, including Australia. It was not an address designed to lower the temperature in China’s increasingly fraught relationships with the outside world.

Read more:
The Communist Party claims to have brought prosperity and equality to China. Here’s the real impact of its rule

In some ways, the speech marked a throwback to the sort of language that defined China’s relationships with its perceived enemies in an earlier Maoist era. Xi’s words might be dismissed as propaganda, but in an era of aggressive “wolf warrior” Chinese diplomacy, they represent a new stage in how Beijing views what it perceives to be a hostile international environment.

Xi’s speech was effectively a call to arms by a Chinese leader who has emerged as his country’s new emperor.

In that regard, Xi is a successor to Mao Zedong and not Deng Xiaoping, who exercised power mostly behind the scenes.

Xi might have dressed himself in a colour-coded grey Mao suit identical to that worn by Mao when he proclaimed the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, but there is not much that is grey about his ambitions for his country.

In one of more pointed sentences in an hour-long speech, he said:

The Chinese people are not only good at destroying an old world, but also good at building a new world.

In Xi’s view, China’s Belt and Road thoroughfare does not stop at its frontiers. Whether we like it or not, the Chinese president’s speech marks an aggressive phase in what is clearly perceived by Beijing’s mandarins as a new and more hostile environment.

All this brings us back to the anniversary of the Whitlam outreach to China in 1971. Documents associated with that historic visit, usefully published by The Australian, remind us that in an earlier era Australia was well-served by a politician capable of navigating potentially treacherous diplomatic terrain.

At the time, the opposition leader, still 18 months away from becoming prime minister, went to Beijing to distinguish Labor from a stale Coalition facsimile of US policy.

At the heart of the Whitlam mission was to navigate a way for Australia to establish diplomatic relations with China. He needed to accommodate the vexed Taiwan issue so as not to lay himself open to accusations he had “sold out” the Taiwanese.

Whitlam’s own dispatches, published by The Australian, and independent accounts of his exchanges with Premier Zhou Enlai, revealed he more than held his own with China’s master diplomat. These included, principally, the question of Taiwan in what became the blueprint for Australia’s “one China policy”.

This stated that “Australia adheres to a one China policy which means we do not recognise Taiwan as a country, but we maintain economic and cultural ties”. This conforms more or less with the American formula published in the Shanghai Communique of February 1972, signed by US President Richard Nixon and Zhou.

Whitlam was lucky politically in the sense that no sooner had then Prime Minister William McMahon berated him for allowing himself to be “played as a fisherman plays a trout” by Zhou, it emerged that even as the opposition leader was in Beijing, US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was in the Chinese capital arranging a visit by Nixon.

Whitlam’s timing could hardly have been more advantageous to him politically, and more propitious from an Australian point of view. The newly-elected Whitlam government recognised the “one China” formula as one of its first acts after being elected in December 1972.

This was followed by more than four decades of relatively harmonious relations between Canberra and Beijing, upset on occasions by episodes like the Tiananmen massacre. That was until China began to assert itself more aggressively in its own neighbourhood, and ours.

On the 50th anniversary of Whitlam’s ground-breaking mission to Beijing, it is reasonable to ask how he would have managed relations with a more assertive China in this latest period?

Since Whitlam is no longer with us, the words of Australia’s first ambassador to China and Whitlam’s interpreter on his 1971 China mission might be useful.

In the view of Stephen FitzGerald, Australia needs to find a way to make use of both formal diplomatic channels, and, if necessary, and maybe preferably, “back channels”. This is the realpolitik argument that tends to be ignored in Canberra these days, where China policy is dominated by the national security establishment.

It is a different China but that does not absolve us of the responsibility of trying to engaged with it. It does not matter what you think about the government and, let’s face it, the government in China when Whitlam went in 1971 was not exactly a loveable government. China is now economically bigger, more powerful, but you have to engage with a country like whatever you think of it. This is what Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam are doing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison got similar advice last month from Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong), whose message was that China’s rise is a fact of life and needs to be managed in a way that avoids confrontation, if possible.

You don’t have to become like them, neither can you hope to make them become like you […] There will be rough spots and you have to deal with that. But deal with them as issues in a partnership which you want to keep going and not issues, which add up to an adversary which you are trying to suppress.

On the anniversary of the Whitlam breakthrough these sentiments may be all very well, but the reasonable question is what the choice is.

Morrison and his foreign policy team should pay particular attention to Whitlam’s emphasis in his conversations with Zhou and in his written accounts of his visit to China to Australia’s own significance as a middle power seeking to play a constructive role in the region.

Read more:
Timeline of a broken relationship: how China and Australia went from chilly to barely speaking

This was Whitlam’s way of conveying to the Chinese that Canberra, under his leadership, would seek to define itself and its own interests from those of its American ally. That is, not in contradiction to Washington necessarily, but from Australia’s own middle-power standpoint.

This is what could be described as statecraft, a quality absent from Australian diplomacy these days.

Morrison and his advisers might pay heed to these lessons if he is to get Australia out of the diplomatic cul de sac with China in which it finds itself.

A bit of creative statecraft, along lines suggested by FitzGerald, would not go astray.

Tony Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Fifty years after Whitlam’s breakthrough China trip, the Morrison government could learn much from it – https://theconversation.com/fifty-years-after-whitlams-breakthrough-china-trip-the-morrison-government-could-learn-much-from-it-163716

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of South Australia

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has received criticism from the general public for not having a concrete plan to take us out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, he went some way to addressing this on Friday, announcing national cabinet had agreed to a four-phase plan to get us back to something resembling our pre-COVID way of life.

It’s not yet very detailed, and no dates have been set out for the various phases. But we do have some idea of what’s being proposed, and Morrison said moving through each phase will depend on reaching vaccination targets determined from modelling, currently being undertaken by Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute.

The idea is to transition from our current priority of suppressing transmission of the virus, to a focus on the prevention of serious illness, hospitalisation and deaths.

Let me take you through each phase and what we know so far.

Phase 1: vaccinate, prepare and pilot

We are in Phase 1 now, and the aim is to continue to minimise community transmission.

Lockdowns may continue to be used in this phase, although only as a last resort.

The international arrivals cap will now be reduced by 50% to take pressure off our hotel quarantine system due to the increased infectiousness of the Delta variant.

Read more:
What’s the Delta COVID variant found in Melbourne? Is it more infectious and does it spread more in kids? A virologist explains

Morrison has indicated he expects the cap to stay in place until at least the beginning of 2022.

However, the federal government will facilitate increased repatriation flights to Darwin for quarantine at Howard Springs.

Also, as part of this current phase, there will be a trial of home quarantine for fully vaccinated returnees. This will be for seven days rather than 14.

South Australia has already indicated it would be willing to take part in this trial.

Read more:
Home quarantine for vaccinated returned travellers is extremely low risk, and won’t damage their mental health

Phase 2: post-vaccination

In this phase, the international arrival cap will be restored to current levels for unvaccinated passengers, and a larger cap applied to fully vaccinated passengers.

Lockdowns would rarely be needed, and fully vaccinated people would have eased restrictions in any outbreak with respect to lockdowns or border closures. More students and economic visitors will also be allowed in.

Although no dates or vaccine rollout targets have been set, for us to reach Phase 2, we would clearly need a high percentage of our population to be fully vaccinated.

As it will take at least until the end of year for the whole adult population to have received their first dose, Phase 2 is likely to kick in some time in the first half of 2022.

Phase 3: consolidation

In Phase 3, COVID would be treated more like the flu, presumably with annual booster shots to account for new variants. Fully vaccinated Australians would be able to travel abroad.

There would be no lockdowns, no cap on returning vaccinated travellers, and no domestic restrictions for vaccinated residents. We would be able to have travel bubbles with countries in a similar situation.

There would also be increased, albeit still capped, entries for international students.

Realistically, we are probably talking about the second half of 2022 before we can enter Phase 3.

Read more:
View from The Hill: COVID transition plan has bad news for returning travellers

Phase 4: final

Here life returns to relative normality, very similar to the way it was before the pandemic began. However, there would still be pre- and post-flight testing for unvaccinated arrivals, and a vaccine passport system will likely be in place. I imagine there will still be a focus on hand hygiene and coughing etiquette.

The plan depends to a large extent on vaccine availability, any new and more transmissible variants arising, and persuading enough Australians to get vaccinated.

It will create a two-class system of those who are fully vaccinated and who will have lots of freedoms, and those not. Although there are some people who, for medical or even religious reasons, might not be able to be vaccinated, for the vast majority, it is a choice.

Read more:
A vaccine will be a game-changer for international travel. But it’s not everything

Morrison’s statement says the plan will depend very much on the percentage of Australians 16 years and older who are fully vaccinated.

However, the Delta variant may be spreading more easily in children, although it’s not yet clear whether this is simply a function of the variant being more transmissible in general. It’s also unclear whether this leads to increased serious illness in those children infected.

Overall, I think the plan is sensible, if somewhat vague. Phase 1 calls for lockdowns to be a last resort, although I think this a big ask given the low percentage of the population currently fully vaccinated. Singapore has proposed a similar plan, but is way ahead of us in its vaccine rollout, with more than 60% of its population likely to be fully vaccinated by August.

So, for those desperate for international holidays, there is light at the end of the tunnel. You can potentially start packing in the second half of next year.

Adrian Esterman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Australia has a new four-phase plan for a return to normality. Here’s what we know so far – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-new-four-phase-plan-for-a-return-to-normality-heres-what-we-know-so-far-163804

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bhiamie Williamson, Research Associate & PhD Candidate, Australian National University

NAIDOC week has just begun and, after several tumultuous years of disasters in Australia, the theme this year is Heal Country.

In the last two years, Australia has suffered crippling drought that saw the Darling-Baaka run dry, catastrophic bushfires, and major flooding throughout coastal and inland areas of Australia’s east.

Just two weeks ago, UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre recommended one of our national treasures, the Great Barrier Reef, be listed as in danger.

If these events, and the thought of other inevitable climate change-driven disasters sadden or madden you, consider how it impacts Indigenous peoples.

So with this in mind, and the rest of NAIDOC week ahead of us, let’s take a moment (most likely from lockdown) to explore the theme of Heal Country in more detail.

More than a landscape

For Indigenous people, Country is more than a landscape. We tell, and retell, stories of how our Country was made, and we continue to rely upon its resources — food, water, plants and animals — to sustain our ways of life. Country also holds much of our heritage, including scarred trees, stone arrangements, petroglyphs, rock art, tools and much more.

Indigenous people talk of, and to, Country, as they would another person. As the late eminent ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose famously wrote:

Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like ‘spending a day in the country’ or ‘going up the country’.

Rather, Country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life.

As cultural and spiritual beings, and with deep and ongoing attachments to lands and waters, the impacts of climate change interrupt and make uncertain our unique ways of life. This increasing reality is shared with Indigenous peoples all over the world.

These sentiments were captured by Tishiko King, a Kulkalaig woman from the island of Masi in the Torres Strait. In her reflections on returning home in December 2020, she explained:

I had to pick up the bones of my Elders because erosion is damaging our burial sites. As First Nations people we know that these are our spirits of our old people, and it’s a sign of disrespect.

It’s desecrating who they are. It’s that heart-wrenching pain in your chest.

This is why the National NAIDOC Committee has sought to draw attention to our struggle.

Why Heal Country?

Through this year’s theme, the National NAIDOC Committee invites the whole nation to embrace “First Nations’ cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia’s national heritage”.

This requires understanding the depths of Indigenous peoples’ connections to Country and treasuring our heritage values.

But “understanding” and “treasuring” will only go so far in the face of increased drought, more severe storms or changing seasons and animal behaviours as a result of climate change.

As Bianca McNeair, a Malgana woman from Western Australia and co-chair of the First People’s Gathering on Climate Change, shared with The Guardian:

[Traditional Owners] are talking about how the birds’ movements across country have changed, so that’s changing songlines that they’ve been singing for thousands and thousands of years, and how that’s impacting them as a community and culture.

All Australians have much at stake if radical steps to cut emissions aren’t taken. For Indigenous peoples, the consequences of climate change are much more profound.

Not all disasters are natural

But talking only of climate change doesn’t capture the full reality threatening Indigenous peoples ways of life.

The destruction of Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto in 2020 caused international outrage for the clear disregard for not only Indigenous culture, but human history.

Likewise, the notorious McArthur River mine in the Northern Territory has been damaging the environment and nearby township of Borroloola, from the leaking of potentially harmful contaminants to waste rock that smouldered for months.

These events, as well as others, continue to be examined through the Juukan Gorge Senate inquiry.

Heal Country forces us to see these events not in isolation, but in a chain of disasters that continue to impact and threaten Indigenous peoples. It invites people to see the land and water through our eyes and understand that although we didn’t produce these problems, we suffer from them.

Heal Country seeks reflection, for all Australians to ask themselves what they treasure about being from, and living on, this land.

If, like us, you find peace, pride and enjoyment from our natural values — our beaches, mountains, rivers, wetlands, forests, deserts and more — then perhaps it’s time to get off the bench and become an advocate for change.

Read more:
Rio Tinto just blasted away an ancient Aboriginal site. Here’s why that was allowed

Three ways you can help

Indigenous people continue to stand up for and protect their Country. But in a nation where their connections, culture and heritage are seen by governments as being of lesser value than minerals, it is often a lonely struggle.

I asked people to consider the impacts on Country, culture and heritage in my article for The Conversation during the 2019-2020 bushfires. Now, I ask that you consider it against the backdrop of an uncertain future.

Far from being powerless to protect Country, there is much an everyday Australian can do. Here are three examples:

1) Make a submission to the Juukan Gorge inquiry.

The Juukan Gorge inquiry is one of the most important in our recent history. The protection and management of Indigenous peoples’ culture and heritage is being thoroughly examined, with recommendations to better balance the protection of these things against future economic growth.

You can lend your voice — or that of your organisation — to express support and solidarity with Indigenous peoples through a submission.

2) Donate to charities that support Indigenous land and sea management programs.

These organisations are key to advocating on behalf of Indigenous people and offer guidance, advice and support to Indigenous communities seeking to establish their own programs. Two of note include Firesticks Alliance and Country Needs People.

3) Write an email to your local member.

Ask your local member how they’re supporting local Indigenous land and sea management programs, including ranger groups or cultural burning initiatives. If you live in the city, ask how their party supports Indigenous groups in their caring for Country aspirations.

Read more:
Strength from perpetual grief: how Aboriginal people experience the bushfire crisis

Heal Country invites all Australians to walk with us, to stand beside us, to support us.

But perhaps most importantly, it invites Australians to love, treasure and fight for this land, as we have done, and will do, forever.

Bhiamie Williamson is a member of the ACT Bushfire Council, an Independent Expert on the NSW Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program Steering Committee, and a Director of Country Needs People.

– ref. ‘Although we didn’t produce these problems, we suffer them’: 3 ways you can help in NAIDOC’s call to Heal Country – https://theconversation.com/although-we-didnt-produce-these-problems-we-suffer-them-3-ways-you-can-help-in-naidocs-call-to-heal-country-163362

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew J. Martin, Scientia Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology, UNSW

Setting goals to try to outdo your previous best effort is known as growth goal setting or personal best goals. It is fundamentally focused on self improvement, such as investing more time or effort in a task than before or striving to achieve a higher result in the next test than the previous one.

Research over the past decade into approaches like these in education has shown it has many benefits. They include improved engagement, learning and achievement.

But it is unclear if these benefits disproportionately apply to already academically advantaged students. We wanted to know if setting goals to improve past performance affected the educational outcomes of academically disadvantaged students.

Our study, recently published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, looked at goal setting to beat previous efforts in high school students.

We found students who set goals like these were much more engaged in school than those who didn’t. And the benefits were even more positive for students in lower socioeconomic groups and students who had low levels of prior achievement.

Striving for self improvement

Growth goal setting refers to the very concrete and practical strategy of setting and striving for specific self-improvement targets.

Our interest follows a prior investigation showing that setting goals to improve was associated with increased engagement and achievement, particularly for students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Read more:
You can do it! A ‘growth mindset’ helps us learn

In our new study, we wanted to find out if striving to improve through goal setting benefited other groups of students who may be academically disadvantaged — those from low socioeconomic status backgrounds and with low prior academic achievement. Research has shown disparities in academic outcomes between these students and students from high socioeconomic backgrounds and with high prior achievement.

So we wanted to find out if setting goals to improve could narrow the gap. We also explored the role of teachers’ instruction in supporting students’ growth goal setting.

How we did our study

We drew on the New South Wales Department of Education’s annual “Tell Them from Me” student survey (provided by, and the intellectual property of, The Learning Bar).

Our study involved 61,879 high school students from 290 government schools across NSW. This represented 66% of NSW high schools. An average of 71% of students in each school responded to the survey.

Students participated in the first term of 2018 and again in the first term of 2019. Students were in years 7-10 in 2018 and years 8-11 in 2019. Half the sample was female.

They had to answer four sets of survey questions on their:

1. self-improvement goals. This was assessed by asking students to rate themselves (from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) on statements such as “When I do my schoolwork, I try to improve on how I’ve done before”) from a validated self-report measure

2. teachers’ instructional support. This was measured by students’ ratings of the extent to which their teachers gave them feedback on improving, as well as clear and organised lessons, and instructional relevance

3. academic engagement (perseverance, aspirations, attendance and positive homework behaviour)

4. personal background attributes (such as their socioeconomic levels and language background).

What we found

We found that setting self-improvement goals was associated with significant gains in all students’ perseverance, aspirations, and positive homework behaviour.

We also found teachers’ instructional practices (especially improvement-oriented feedback and instructional relevance) were important for supporting students’ growth goal setting.

The effect for perseverance was particularly striking: students who more frequently pursued growth goals were 30% more perseverant than students who were not as inclined to pursue growth goals.

Especially noteworthy was the finding that setting goals to improve on past efforts had particular benefits for academically disadvantaged students.

For students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and those with low prior achievement, such goals were associated with more aspirations to complete school and school attendance.

The positive effects on students’ engagement were over and above the effects of prior engagement. Students who pursued self-improvement by setting goals demonstrated significant improvements in aspirations and attendance from one year to the next.

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Five tips to help year 12 students set better goals in the final year of school

We also found setting goals to improve minimised differences in school attendance between students from low and high socioeconomic backgrounds. In fact, low socioeconomic students who had higher growth goals were among the highest school attenders.

With regard to aspirations, setting self-improvement goals seemed to have a significant bolstering effect for students with lower prior achievement. This helped reduce the aspiration gap between low and high achieving students.

We found if low achieving students set goals to beat their previous efforts, the gap between their aspirations and the aspirations of high achieving students decreased by more than 50%.

Why setting growth goals might help

Further research is needed to fully understand our findings. One explanation may be that focusing on personal progress is motivational for academically disadvantaged students.

Read more:
‘You’re the best!’ Your belief in your kids’ academic ability can actually improve their grades

Struggling students may believe they can’t personally be academically successful if they compare themselves to others. This can lead to feelings of inferiority and disengagement. But when students are encouraged to focus on themselves and their improvement (setting goals to improve), academic success is seen as much more accessible. Exceeding one’s own prior efforts is typically seen by students as more achievable than outperforming others.

Students can learn how to set goals to improve. For a practical guide to setting self-improvement goals, see the NSW Department of Education.

Andrew J. Martin consults with the New South Wales Department of Education. He receives funding from the New South Wales Department of Education.

Emma Burns, Keiko C. P. Bostwick, and Rebecca J Collie do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Setting goals to beat previous efforts improves educational outcomes. And the gains are bigger for disadvantaged students – https://theconversation.com/setting-goals-to-beat-previous-efforts-improves-educational-outcomes-and-the-gains-are-bigger-for-disadvantaged-students-163073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Libby (Elizabeth) Sander, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bond Business School, Bond University

If you’ve ever felt your noisy open-plan office makes you cranky and sends your heart racing, our new research shows you aren’t imagining it.

Prior to the pandemic 70% of office-based employees worked in open-plan offices. Employee complaints about this design are rife.

Yet there is little experimental research investigating the effects of office noise on things like cognitive performance, physiological stress and mood.

The results of our study, in experimentally controlled conditions using heart rate, skin conductivity and AI facial emotion recognition, shows the effects of that noise are very real.

We’ve found a significant causal relationship between open-plan office noise and physiological stress.

Our results show such noise heightens negative mood by 25% — and these results come from testing participants in an simulated open-plan office for just eight minutes at a time. In a real office, where workers are exposed to noise continuously during the day, we would expect the effects on stress and mood to be even greater.

How we simulated open-plan office noise

We used a simulated office setting with volunteers to compare the effects of typical open-plan office noise to a quieter private office on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance. Our carefully manipulated soundscapes included people speaking, walking, printing papers, ringing telephones, and keyboard typing noises.

Our study involved observing the same individuals “working” — participants were asked to complete a proof-reading task — under the two noise conditions. We varied the order of the sound tests to avoid bias due to fatigue and training effects.
This “repeated measures experimental design” allowed us to make causal conclusions about the effects of the noise on well-being indicators.

Read more:
A new study should be the final nail for open-plan offices

We used sensors to track changes in heart rate and sweat response — both reliable indicators of physiological stress. We used facial emotion recognition software to assess emotional responses. We also had participants self-report their own feeling using a mood scale.

Even after a short exposure, we found a causal relationship between open-plan office noise and both stress and negative mood. Negative mood increased by 25% and sweat response by 34%.

While there was no immediate effect on reduced work performance, it is reasonable to assume such hidden stress over the longer term is detrimental to well-being and productivity.

Precise causal relationships

Our study addresses a gap in the literature by using a simulated office environment with objectively manipulated noise levels and a wide range of objective and subjective dependent variables.

Reviews in research in this field show past studies have tended to only use self-reported measures. They have not used controlled experimental conditions, nor tested sound parameters.

Comparing multiple output measures has allowed us to investigate cause-effect relationships. Much research on open-plan offices has not established direct causal connections, which is necessary to understand precise relationships, and thus the how to most effectively and efficiently reduce these stressors.

Although open-plan offices rarely present an immediate physical danger in terms of sound levels, unrelenting exposure all day intensifies their effects.

Read more:
How employers can design workplaces to promote wellness

Chronically elevated levels of physiological stress are known to be detrimental to mental and physical health.

Frequently being in a negative mood is also likely to harm job satisfaction and commitment. It potentially increases the likelihood of employees leaving.

What to do about it

The pandemic has changed our tolerance for office work. Surveys show up to 70% of employees will seek new jobs if their employer does not offer flexibility to work from home some of the time. So creating a healthy work environment is more important than ever.

As organisations seek to adapt to COVID-19, many are reconsidering how they set up and use the office. Though open-plan offices are unlikely to go away any time soon, our study highlights the importance of understanding employee needs in designing work spaces.

Read more:
The death of the open-plan office? Not quite, but a revolution is in the air

One advantage of more employees working from home at least some of the time is a is a less crowded office, reducing both visual and auditory distractions.

But there are other things that can be done. Acoustic treatments and sound-masking technologies — ambient sounds designed to make other people talking less intrusive — can help. Good old-fashioned walls or partitions may also assist.

Such interventions can be costly, but so is the impact of poor office environmental quality on productivity.

And we might all feel happier about going back to the office.

Libby (Elizabeth) Sander receives funding from the Australian Government under the Industry Connections Grant Award.

– ref. Open-plan office noise increases stress and worsens mood: we’ve measured the effects – https://theconversation.com/open-plan-office-noise-increases-stress-and-worsens-mood-weve-measured-the-effects-162843

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Becky Freeman, Associate professor, University of Sydney

The murder investigation hits another dead end. Tired and frustrated, the detective stomps out of the station. She stares into the middle distance, forcefully sucking on a vape and expelling smoky puffs. Actor Kate Winslett has smoked on screen before, but not like this.

The tobacco and entertainment industries have long and tangled histories — including product placement in movies, television sponsorships and promotional relationships with glamorous Hollywood stars. In 2012, the US Surgeon General’s report found “a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in the movies and the initiation of smoking among young people”.

Now new forms of nicotine consumption are being reflected in popular culture. Is vaping in movies and television merely a case of history repeating or something else entirely?

Read more:
Making it harder to import e-cigarettes is good news for our health, especially young people’s

Smoking exits stage left

From Humphrey Bogart’s hardboiled detective roles in the 1940s through teen rebels like James Dean and Olivia Newton-John in Grease to Sharon Stone’s femme fatale in the 1990s, smoking was a constant sight for cinema-goers until recently. Then attitudes and policies began to change in line with health warnings and government regulations.

While some major tobacco companies state they no longer pay for or allow their tobacco brands to appear on screen, depictions of smoking remain relatively common, including in global streaming service content with high youth viewership.

Equally, entertainment content creators, such as Disney, have stated they will no longer include smoking depictions in content aimed at children. But policy exceptions mean smoking depictions on screens continue.

Now vaping is also being depicted in films and on television.

Researched since the 1930s but first commercialised in 2003, e-cigarettes were designed to look like cigarettes, cigars, pipes, pens or memory sticks. As told in the podcast The Vaping Fix, battery-operated products like Juul were proposed as a safer form of smoking. They are emerging as far from harmless. In Australia it is illegal to sell e-cigarettes containing nicotine.

Read more:
Vaping-related lung disease now has a name – and a likely cause. 5 things you need to know about EVALI

Vaping hits the big time

The increasing popularity of e-cigarettes, vaping devices, and heated tobacco has seen these products appear in popular movies and television shows.

One of the earliest on-screen examples of e-cigarette use is from the 2010 film, The Tourist, which features Johnny Depp’s character using an electronic cigarette on a train.

Kevin Spacey’s character vapes in a luxe room in the second season of House of Cards.

In 2014, a Canadian e-cigarette company reportedly paid for its product to be used by the female lead, played by Milla Jovovich, in the film adaption of Cymbeline.

At first glance it seems the vaping industry is simply repeating the highly successful tobacco marketing strategies of the past.

Since these early examples of e-cigarette use on screen, the global tobacco industry has become heavily invested in vaping products and their promotion. Exposure to vaping depictions and imagery on social media platforms is rife and includes paying high profile users to promote e-cigarettes and tobacco products.

On 29 June 2021, e-cigarette maker Juul, of which tobacco giant Altria (parent company of Philip Morris USA) has a 35% share, agreed to pay the US state of North Carolina $40 million for allegedly marketing to teenagers.

Read more:
Vaping and e-cigarettes are glamourised on social media, putting young people in harm’s way

From glamour to gritty

In contrast to early cinematic cigarette smoking, vaping in the critically acclaimed and popular television series, Mare of Easttown, is depicted as less than glamorous.

Kate Winslet stars as the titular character. Mare is a small-town detective who is haunted by family tragedy and is part of a community affected by drug use, violence, limited health and social services, and poverty. She vapes in scenes of high stress and to escape conflict situations.

While Mare is a highly sympathetic character, her vaping is depicted as an addiction, not as an aspirational activity. (Insiders say the vape was a prop only and didn’t contain nicotine or tobacco.)

Mare also smokes a cigarette in the series which is a realistic portrayal, as nearly 40% of US adult e-cigarette users also smoke. Her smoking is not depicted as desirable or fashionable and the series’ themes make it decidedly adult viewing.

This stands in stark comparison to previous Winslet roles. In the 1997 film Titanic, her Rose character smokes using a slender cigarette holder while in the elegant dress and surrounds of the luxury cruise liner.

Other high-profile recent portrayals of vaping on screen include Rosamund Pike’s character, Marla, in the film, I Care a Lot. Her character has previously run a failed vape business.

There is no evidence or suggestion the vaping in Mare of Easttown or I Care a Lot is directly sponsored by the vaping or tobacco industry. These particular depictions may accurately reflect the reality of vaping and its growing popularity.

Can we regulate it?

Given Australia’s strict regulation of vaping products, including advertising restrictions and a ban on the retail sale of any devices that contain nicotine, no paid vaping product placement would be permissible in content that is produced in Australia. However, much of the media and entertainment content viewed in Australia is not made here.

Similarly, while paid tobacco placement or sponsorship of media content produced within Australia would be a violation of the Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act 1992 Act, it does not prevent content made overseas, that may contain paid promotions, from being distributed here.

Tobacco depictions, even those that glamorise or promote smoking, are permissible provided these is no support or payment by the tobacco industry. Tobacco use may be considered though by the Australian Classification Board when assigning a classification rating.

Several policy solutions have been proposed to reduce smoking depictions on screens and these could equally apply to vaping depictions. They include adult ratings on content that depicts use, certifying that no payoffs were received for vaping depictions and not making vaping brands identifiable on screen.

With the smoking and media landscape changing, it is critical Australia keeps pace with a ban on the advertising and promotion of all tobacco and vaping products.

Becky Freeman has received funding from the Cancer Council, NHMRC, Heart Foundation, Healthway, and the WHO for work related to e-cigarette use and promotion. She is a member of the NHMRC Electronic Cigarette Working Committee and acts as an expert advisor to the Cancer Council Tobacco Issues Committee.

Christina Watts is an employee of Cancer Council NSW.

– ref. Smoke screens: vaping on film looks less glamorous than the Hollywood smoking of yesteryear – https://theconversation.com/smoke-screens-vaping-on-film-looks-less-glamorous-than-the-hollywood-smoking-of-yesteryear-163359

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Blakely, Professor of Epidemiology, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

The first phase of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s four-stage “pathway out of the COVID-19 pandemic”, announced on Friday, focuses on vaccinating as many Australians as possible, while halving the cap on international arrivals.

Morrison expects phase one, which we’re currently in, to be in place until 2022. But he said it’s hard to give a definitive answer on when we’ll get to phase two because vaccination targets have not yet been set. He’s waiting for the modelling.

Phase two of Morrison’s plan is a move back to the current levels of international arrivals, and a separate cap for vaccinated travellers. Phase three sees Australians able to travel abroad and no cap on returnees.

We are undertaking our own detailed modelling of border openings and while we’re yet to release our models, we can still arrive at fairly solid conclusions now. We’re basing these on the theory that Australia could substantially open its borders in the second quarter of 2022 with quarantine-free travel from many (but not all) countries.

The key trick, though, is to not think of vaccination as the only intervention. It is vaccination — together with three other measures: ongoing aggressive contact tracing, mask-wearing in high-risk settings and some physical distancing — that will make it safe to open.

Put another way, even when we immunise all Australians who want to be protected against COVID-19, we’re unlikely to achieve herd immunity through vaccination alone.

Vaccination targets

Modelling performed by the University of Sydney, the Burnett Institute and previously by us all point to the reality that opening the borders before about two-thirds of the population is vaccinated (in the absence of strong additional methods) could cause considerable illness and death.

So it seems unethical to substantially open the borders until everyone has had a fair opportunity to get vaccinated. All going well, this should occur sometime in the second quarter of 2022.

This would, however, be dependent on children also having the opportunity to be vaccinated. While other countries have started vaccinating children, Australia has yet to approve this use.

Vaccination alone won’t get us herd immunity

Some vaccination programs alone can achieve herd immunity, or resilience, meaning the virus won’t spread easily and exponentially, in the absence of masks, contact tracing and the other measures we have used during the pandemic.

But given the Delta variant means an average infected person infects five others without any other measures in place, and given vaccines are not perfect, Australia would need 90% of adults and children vaccinated to achieve herd immunity (through vaccination alone). This is unlikely.

There will be some waning in vaccine immunity over time, and new variants for which Pfizer and AstraZeneca are less effective. However, even with 100% of the population vaccinated, herd immunity may not be achieved by vaccination alone until booster vaccines become available.

How did we get to 90%?

The Delta variant has an R0 (the number of people one infected person on average infects) of about 5.0 under pre-COVID-19 ways of living. This is twice that of the original Wuhan virus which had an R0 about 2.5.

For an R0 of 5.0, theoretically, 80% of the population have to be immune — not just vaccinated — for virus transmission not to take off.

But the actual vaccine coverage required is higher, as the vaccines aren’t 100% effective at stopping any infection. And even though a person has been vaccinated, it doesn’t mean they’re always immune from the virus, as the person may not develop a strong immune response.

Vaccination with two doses of Pfizer among adults aged 16-60 years old is likely about 80% successful at stopping any Delta infection. For those 60 or older, the effectiveness of AstraZeneca at reducing the risk of any infection is less: about 60% against the Delta virus.

Read more:
Should I get my second AstraZeneca dose? Yes, it almost doubles your protection against Delta

Over half, 58%, of the population are aged 16-59, and 23% of the population are aged 60-plus. So for 80% vaccination coverage of adults, the estimated percentage of the population who are immune is 48% — well short of the 80% herd immunity threshold.

For those still at risk of getting infected after either Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccination, they are 50% less likely to transmit it. So the 16% of the population who were vaccinated but can still get infected are half as likely to pass it on.

The remaining 36% of the population are fully susceptible (20% of adults, and all children).

Extending this maths, we need about 90% of everyone (children and adults) to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. This is unlikely to happen.

What’s our alternative?

Using both the above theory, and what we have seen so far in our modelling, we can outline scenarios going forward:

From now until about April 2022, we propose we vaccinate as many people as possible and retain the goal of zero community transmission. Eliminating the virus after each outbreak will get easier with increasing vaccine coverage. And the probability each month of a lockdown somewhere in Australia will diminish.

This phase in our modelling is similar to the government’s first phase.

Back to our scenario: in early-to-mid 2022, we propose some modest opening of borders, through travel bubbles to other countries with virtually no community transmission, such as China and Singapore.

This is a divergence from the government’s second phase.

By mid-2022, we could allow many more countries to have quarantine-free travel to Australia, and arrivals might jump to something like half the volume pre-COVID-19.

However, people from high-risk countries — with a peak in infection, or a new variant of concern — would still have to go through 14-day (or modified) quarantine, in Howard Springs or purpose-built facilities, rather than hotel quarantine.

Then we have two choices.

If we open up to pre-COVID settings — with no contact tracing, no masks, no physical distancing — there will be repeated and serious outbreaks requiring lockdowns.

We might see enough natural infection to top-off the vaccination-induced immunity to get us to something like herd immunity. But the numbers are frightening: we may need about a fifth of us to acquire natural infection. That is five million Australians infected with substantial illness and death.

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

Thankfully, we have another choice: accept that some restrictions and public health measures need to continue beyond mid-2022 to complement vaccination.

As noted in the graph above, there is still a lot of uncertainty about how we open up the borders. We, and other groups, are actively modelling these options to more fully articulate and quantify pathways out.

The good news is even though herd immunity through vaccination alone is no longer a realistic option, there is an alternative path out through high vaccine coverage augmented by ongoing contact tracing, mask-wearing and physical distancing.

Put another way, 80% vaccination of adults pulls the effective reproductive rate down from 5.0 to 2.2, which is not enough to stop exponential spread. But a mix of mask-wearing, contact tracing and physical distancing will be enough to pull the effective reproductive rate to less than 1.0 — low enough to halt the spread of COVID-19.

Tony Blakely receives funding from philanthropy and the Asia Development Bank for COVID-19 modelling.

Vijaya Sundararajan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 80% vaccination won’t get us herd immunity, but it could mean safely opening international borders – https://theconversation.com/80-vaccination-wont-get-us-herd-immunity-but-it-could-mean-safely-opening-international-borders-162863

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Binoy Kampmark, Senior Lecturer in Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT University

This piece is part of a new series in collaboration with the ABC’s Saturday Extra program. Each week, the show will have a “who am I” quiz for listeners about influential figures who helped shape the 20th century, and we will publish profiles for each one. You can read the other pieces in the series here and here.

The idea of a global institution has captivated thinkers since Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. But a body set up to create and maintain world peace and security needs the right people to make it work.

When the United Nations was created in 1945, old sentiments — seen in the disbanded League of Nations — threatened to prevail. Would the UN and its leadership simply comply with the great powers of the day?

Dag Hammarskjöld was the UN’s second secretary-general from 1953 to 1961. He showed that defiant independence in this role was possible.

Political upbringing

Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping in south-central Sweden in 1905, the fourth son of Sweden’s first world war prime minister Hjalmar Hammarskjöld.

In 1953, he reflected on his family’s influence on his career.

From generations of soldiers and government officials on my father’s side I inherited a belief that no life was more satisfactory than one of selfless service to your country — or humanity.

After doing degrees covering literature, linguistics, history, economics and law, he entered the Swedish civil service in 1930, ending up in Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In the late 1940s he represented Sweden at the newly formed United Nations.

A new secretary-general

In 1953, he succeeded Norway’s Trgve Lie as UN secretary-general — easily securing enough votes for the job. At this point, the international state system was in crisis. The Cold War and the Iron Curtain threatened the paralyse the entire organisation.

Hammarskjöld’s approach and lasting legacy was to develop the secretary-general’s political role. He took executive action, which filled power vacuums as the colonial system broke apart after the second world war.

Two concepts underpinned this approach. The first was intervention to maintain international order — thereby transforming the UN from a static international body to a more engaged one.

These interventions including “preventative diplomacy” – trying to stem conflict from developing and spreading — fact-finding missions, peacekeeping forces and operations, technical assistance and international administration.

Fledgling states could rely on UN assistance till they were self-functioning. Doing so would preserve the independence of decolonised countries and forge an international system with “equal economic opportunities for all individuals and nations”.

As Hammarskjöld explained in 1960, the UN was ideal for this task.

a universal organisation neutral in the big power struggles over ideology and influence in the world, subordinated to the common will of the Member Governments and free from any aspirations of its own power and influence over any group or nation.

Indeed, the second key concept was a firm commitment to neutrality when maintaining international order. This was considered a vital element for an international organisation dedicated to global governance.

In practice, Hammarskjöld negotiated the release of United States soldiers captured by the Chinese volunteer army during the Korean War and attempted to resolve the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. He was also instrumental to facilitating the withdrawal of US and British troops from Lebanon and Jordan in 1958. In such conduct, he defined the secretary-general’s office in international diplomacy and conflict management and ensured the lingering role of peacekeeping operations.

Making waves — and enemies

But the expansion of this type of intervention by the UN was not welcomed by the traditional powers. Reflecting on the role played by Hammarskjöld during the Suez Crisis, Sir Pierson Dixon, British Ambassador to the UN, observed the secretary-general could no longer be considered a “a symbol or even an executive: he has become a force”.

As historian Susan Williams writes,

Hammarskjöld sought to shield the newly-independent nations from the predatory aims of the Great Powers. His enemies included colonialists and settlers in Africa who were determined to maintain white minority rule.

In September 1961, Hammarskjöld was on a peace mission in the newly independent Congo. But while flying from Leopoldville, former capital of the Belgian Congo, to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (present day Zambia),
his plane crashed. Everyone on board, including the secretary-general, was killed.

Unsolved mystery

The crash has never officially been recognised as a political assassination. But there have always been deep suspicions, making it one of the great unresolved mysteries of the 20th century.

As then US president Harry Truman told reporters immediately after the crash, Hammarskjöld

was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him.’

Hammarskjöld’s legacy was so profound as to encourage a range of theories as to why he died. In 1992, Australian diplomat George Ivan Smith and Irish author Conor Cruise O’Brien, both UN officials in 1961 in Congo, opined the secretary-general had been shot down by mercenaries in the pay of European industrialists.

In her 2011 book, Who Killed Hammarskjöld? Williams examined the possibility of an assassination or a botched hijacking. Noting details were still murky, she concluded:

his death was most certainly the result of a sinister intervention.

Peacekeeping, neutrality, independence

To this day, Hammarskjöld’s legacy endures through the continued deployment of UN peace keeping operations with the aim of promoting “stability, security and peace processes”.

Read more:
‘Our own 1945 moment’. What do rising China-US tensions mean for the UN?

His shaping of the general-secretary position is also marked: an international, neutral figure tasked, however successful, with using preventative diplomacy, promoting peace and securing an environment where states can develop on their own terms.

Binoy Kampmark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Dag Hammarskjöld: a defiant pioneer of global diplomacy who died in a mystery plane crash – https://theconversation.com/dag-hammarskjold-a-defiant-pioneer-of-global-diplomacy-who-died-in-a-mystery-plane-crash-158307

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

The plan to transition Australia from COVID-as-crisis to COVID-like-flu that Scott Morrison has announced is designed to send a positive message – and an exhortation – to a community jaded by lockdowns, aborted holidays and closed borders.

But its most immediate and concrete measure is a negative.

The caps on returning travellers coming on commercial flights will be halved, as the country deals with the highly infectious Delta strain. The reduced caps, which several states pressed for, are set to last into next year.

Weekly arrivals will be cut to 3,035.

The federal government will increase the number on its sponsored flights bringing people to the Howard Springs quarantine centre. But that won’t compensate for the slashed cap, in what will be a blow to many people already finding it hard to return home.

On the more positive side, alternative quarantine options will be trialled, including home quarantine for returning vaccinated travellers, and there will be expanded commercial trials for limited entry of student and economic visas holders.

Under huge political pressure over the slow vaccine rollout – jabs are currently around eight million – a major aim of Morrison’s four stage plan is to incentivise people to get vaccinated.

At present the rollout is being held back not just by vaccine shortages and other problems but also by hesitancy – and in some cases complacency. The bad publicity around AstraZeneca has contributed to hesitancy.

Under the plan, yet-to-be specified vaccination coverage will be the key to eventually managing COVID like other infectious diseases, notably the flu.

But the “post-vaccination” second stage of the plan won’t be reached until next year – and that’s assuming all goes well.

A vaccination threshold for the easing, minimising or eschewing of restrictions, including lockdowns will be set on the basis of medical evidence and scientific modelling currently being done at Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute.

Morrison said of the vaccination threshold: “This will be a scientific number. It won’t be a political number, it won’t be an arbitrary number.” It could include targets for vulnerable populations such as the over-70s.

Experts give a wide range of rates for the appropriate level of vaccination needed for adequate community immunity.

Morrison announced the plan after national cabinet, at the end of a week that has seen brawling over his encouragement for younger people to take AstraZeneca, despite mixed health advice.

He denied his Monday comments had been inconsistent with the official advice.

Under the plan, the country is presently in phase one – dubbed “vaccinate, prepare and pilot” – when the strategy is to “continue to suppress the virus for the purpose of minimising community transmission”.

The plan has been agreed to “in principle” by the states and territories. But given they have the power over lockdowns and other restrictions, they won’t be bound by its specifics. Also the stages contain menus of measures rather than hard-and-fast commitments.

The “post vaccination” second phase would “seek to minimise serious illness, hospitalisation and fatality” from COVID

The Prime Minister said national cabinet had agreed on a “mind-set change”.

“Our mind-set on managing COVID-19 has to change once you move from pre-vaccination to post-vaccination. That’s the deal for Australians,” said Morrison, who is just out of quarantine after his overseas trip.

The plan says measures in the second phase may include easing restrictions on vaccinated residents, such as lockdowns and border controls. There would be lockdowns only in extreme circumstances to prevent escalating hospitalisations and deaths.

In this stage, inbound passenger caps would be restored at previous levels for unvaccinated returning travellers and there would be larger caps for vaccinated returning travellers.

Capped entry of student and economic visa holders would be allowed, subject to quarantine arrangements.

New reduced quarantine arrangements would apply for vaccinated residents.

The third – “consolidation” – phase would see COVID-19 managed like the public health management of other infectious diseases. There would be no lockdowns and restrictions would be lifted for outbound travellers who were vaccinated. Stage four would bring a final loosening.

There are not indicative timetables for the last two phases to start.

The plan is largely a work-in-progress, as is the vexed rollout, but Morrison hopes it will help drive the jabs, and provide him with some political cover.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. View from The Hill: COVID transition plan has bad news for returning travellers – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-covid-transition-plan-has-bad-news-for-returning-travellers-163818

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Russell, Senior Principal Research Fellow; paediatrician; infectious diseases epidemiologist; vaccinologist, The University of Melbourne

Eighteen months into the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries that have achieved high vaccination coverage in adults have started vaccinating adolescents aged 12-15.

Drivers to vaccinate children and adolescents include building confidence to open schools, preventing severe disease, and reducing transmission in all ages to achieve “herd immunity”.

But in most countries, including Australia, vaccination of the highest-risk groups is not nearly complete. So does it make sense to vaccinate children and adolescents at this stage?

Read more:
What’s the Delta COVID variant found in Melbourne? Is it more infectious and does it spread more in kids? A virologist explains

COVID-19 in children

COVID-19 is less severe in children and adolescents; most have mild infections or are asymptomatic.

Studies have found multisystem inflammatory syndrome and long COVID to be uncommon after COVID-19 infection, especially in young children.

Newborns and children with other medical conditions are at higher risk of severe disease. But with the level of medical care in Australia, even the more vulnerable children have a very low risk of dying.

Given the increased risk in children with underlying health issues, there may be benefit to vaccinating these children over 12, and a strong case for 16- to 18-year-olds.

But as increasing age is the biggest risk factor for severe disease, vaccinating older people should remain the priority.

Read more:
Children, teens and COVID vaccines: where is the evidence at, and when will kids in Australia be eligible?

Are COVID vaccines safe for kids?

Common side-effects seen in a clinical trial of the Pfizer vaccine in 12- to 15-year-olds included injection site pain (up to 86% of participants), fatigue (up to 66%) and headache (up to 65%). These were mild to moderate in severity and short-lived.

However, two more serious, related conditions — myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart lining) — have been identified in safety surveillance in the United States, Canada and Israel following mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna).

The highest rates are in men under 25 after the second dose. Based on US data up to June 11, for boys aged 12-17, the rate was 66.7 cases per million second doses.

This is more than double the estimated risk of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) following the AstraZeneca vaccine, although myocarditis and pericarditis are less severe.

Most of the 323 cases recorded in the US data went to hospital; some needed intensive care, but the vast majority fully recovered.

What are other countries doing?

These heart conditions may be triggered by autoimmune responses following mRNA vaccines in susceptible young people. Given immune responses are higher in adolescents than adults after vaccination, experts are considering altering the vaccine dosage or schedule in this age group.

Israel is now weighing up a single dose for adolescents, as one dose produces a good immune response, and almost all cases of myocarditis or pericarditis believed to be associated with the vaccine occurred after the second dose.

In the US, the risk of COVID-19 was judged to render the benefits of the existing adolescent vaccination program substantially greater than the risks from vaccination.

In the United Kingdom, infections with the Delta variant have increased, particularly in older adolescents in hotspots. However, the UK has decided not to vaccinate children under 18 just yet, as there would be little direct benefit in this age group.

Vaccine safety must be paramount, especially where the risk of COVID-19 is low, such as in Australia. Although Australia hasn’t yet approved a COVID-19 vaccine for this younger age group, any risk/benefit calculation would be based on our local context, as we’ve seen with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Read more:
Yes, we’ve seen schools close. But the evidence still shows kids are unlikely to catch or spread coronavirus

What about outbreaks in schools?

The most profound effect on children and adolescents during the pandemic has been the impact of school closures on learning, socialisation and emotional development, especially in children with special needs or mental health issues.

The US and Canada are vaccinating adolescents partly to build confidence for returning to school.

School outbreaks do occur and are proportionate to the degree of community transmission. In Australia’s current Delta outbreak, we’ve seen very few school-related infections.

But it’s important to understand adult staff are responsible for most transmission in schools. And most transmission — linked to schools or generally — occurs in households. We’ve seen this even in the UK with the Delta variant.

A Scottish study with data up to February found the highest risk factor of infection in people at risk of severe COVID-19 was the number of adults in their household. Living with children was not a risk factor.

Vaccinating adults, parents and school staff will be key to preventing infections in children and schools.

Read more:
We need to prioritise teachers and staff for COVID vaccination — and stop closing schools with every lockdown

Do we need to vaccinate children and teens to control COVID-19?

Vaccinating large numbers of adults will allow us to prevent deaths and serious illness, and therefore reduce the burden on health systems. That’s the primary goal.

But many countries are also aiming to achieve “herd immunity” through vaccination. High coverage in adults will go a long way to achieving this, but the incremental benefit from vaccinating children 15 and under is still unclear.

In Serrana, a small town in Brazil, where 95% of the adult population (about 75% of the total population) were given two doses of Sinovac vaccine, deaths were reduced by 95%, hospitalisations by 86% and symptomatic infections by 80%. Infections in unvaccinated children and adolescents also went down.

In some countries with adult vaccination rates above 50%, such as Israel, infections have declined overall, suggesting adults play a key role in transmission and preventing infections in children.

In fact, one study in Israel found vaccinating adults did prevent infections in unvaccinated children.

Let’s keep the focus on adults for now

At this stage, the focus of a vaccination program should remain on attaining high coverage in adults, especially the elderly and those with other medical conditions. We should aim for above 90% coverage in these groups to maximise individual protection and prevent transmission to younger age groups.

Another reason to hold off with adolescents is the fact the global COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been slow and highly inequitable.

The World Health Organization has expressed major concern over higher-income countries beginning to vaccinate children while many lower- and middle-income countries have insufficient supply to vaccinate high-priority groups.

Recommendations for vaccination will evolve. But the top priority right now must be maximising vaccination in adults — both in countries that may have the capacity to vaccinate children, and around the world.

Fiona Russell receives funding from the NHMRC, the Wellcome Trust, WHO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and DFAT. She advises DFAT and WHO on COVID-19 vaccines in the Asia-Pacific region.

Peter McIntyre receives funding from Novovax Limited for participation in their scientific monitoring committee, and from the Otago Medical Research Foundation and the Health Research Council, New Zealand for research projects – these funds are held by the University of Otago where he is a Professor. He is a member of the World Health Organisation’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on immunisation and a Professorial Fellow at Australia’s National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance,

Shidan Tosif does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Let’s hold off vaccinating children and teens against COVID-19. Prioritising adults is our best shot for now – https://theconversation.com/lets-hold-off-vaccinating-children-and-teens-against-covid-19-prioritising-adults-is-our-best-shot-for-now-162765

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Jakob, Professor in Atmospheric Science, Monash University

Eight days ago, it rained over the western Pacific Ocean near Japan. There was nothing especially remarkable about this rain event, yet it made big waves twice.

First, it disturbed the atmosphere in just the right way to set off an undulation in the jet stream – a river of very strong winds in the upper atmosphere – that atmospheric scientists call a Rossby wave (or a planetary wave). Then the wave was guided eastwards by the jet stream towards North America.

Along the way the wave amplified, until it broke just like an ocean wave does when it approaches the shore. When the wave broke it created a region of high pressure that has remained stationary over the North American northwest for the past week.

This is where our innocuous rain event made waves again: the locked region of high pressure air set off one of the most extraordinary heatwaves we have ever seen, smashing temperature records in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and in Western Canada as far north as the Arctic. Lytton in British Columbia hit 49.6℃ this week before suffering a devastating wildfire“.

What makes a heatwave?

While this heatwave has been extraordinary in many ways, its birth and evolution followed a well-known sequence of events that generate heatwaves.

Heatwaves occur when there is high air pressure at ground level. The high pressure is a result of air sinking through the atmosphere. As the air descends, the pressure increases, compressing the air and heating it up, just like in a bike pump.

Sinking air has a big warming effect: the temperature increases by 1 degree for every 100 metres the air is pushed downwards.

High-pressure systems are an intrinsic part of an atmospheric Rossby wave, and they travel along with the wave. Heatwaves occur when the high-pressure systems stop moving and affect a particular region for a considerable time.

When this happens, the warming of the air by sinking alone can be further intensified by the ground heating the air – which is especially powerful if the ground was already dry. In the northwestern US and western Canada, heatwaves are compounded by the warming produced by air sinking after it crosses the Rocky Mountains.

How Rossby waves drive weather

This leaves two questions: what makes a high-pressure system, and why does it stop moving?

As we mentioned above, a high-pressure system is usually part of a specific type of wave in the atmosphere – a Rossby wave. These waves are very common, and they form when air is displaced north or south by mountains, other weather systems or large areas of rain.

Read more:
We’ve learned a lot about heatwaves, but we’re still just warming up

Rossby waves are the main drivers of weather outside the tropics, including the changeable weather in the southern half of Australia. Occasionally, the waves grow so large that they overturn on themselves and break. The breaking of the waves is intimately involved in making them stationary.

Importantly, just as for the recent event, the seeds for the Rossby waves that trigger heatwaves are located several thousands of kilometres to the west of their location. So for northwestern America, that’s the western Pacific. Australian heatwaves are typically triggered by events in the Atlantic to the west of Africa.

Another important feature of heatwaves is that they are often accompanied by high rainfall closer to the Equator. When southeast Australia experiences heatwaves, northern Australia often experiences rain. These rain events are not just side effects, but they actively enhance and prolong heatwaves.

What will climate change mean for heatwaves?

Understanding the mechanics of what causes heatwaves is very important if we want to know how they might change as the planet gets hotter.

We know increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing Earth’s average surface temperature. However, while this average warming is the background for heatwaves, the extremely high temperatures are produced by the movements of the atmosphere we talked about earlier.

So to know how heatwaves will change as our planet warms, we need to know how the changing climate affects the weather events that produce them. This is a much more difficult question than knowing the change in global average temperature.

How will events that seed Rossby waves change? How will the jet streams change? Will more waves get big enough to break? Will high-pressure systems stay in one place for longer? Will the associated rainfall become more intense, and how might that affect the heatwaves themselves?

Read more:
Explainer: climate modelling

Our answers to these questions are so far somewhat rudimentary. This is largely because some of the key processes involved are too detailed to be explicitly included in current large-scale climate models.

Climate models agree that global warming will change the position and strength of the jet streams. However, the models disagree about what will happen to Rossby waves.

From climate change to weather change

There is one thing we do know for sure: we need to up our game in understanding how the weather is changing as our planet warms, because weather is what has the biggest impact on humans and natural systems.

To do this, we will need to build computer models of the world’s climate that explicitly include some of the fine detail of weather. (By fine detail, we mean anything about a kilometre in size.) This in turn will require investment in huge amounts of computing power for tools such as our national climate model, the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS), and the computing and modelling infrastructure projects of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) that support it.

We will also need to break down the artificial boundaries between weather and climate which exist in our research, our education and our public conversation.

Christian Jakob receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Michael Reeder receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The North American heatwave shows we need to know how climate change will change our weather – https://theconversation.com/the-north-american-heatwave-shows-we-need-to-know-how-climate-change-will-change-our-weather-163802

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunit K. Singh, Professor of Molecular Immunology and Virology, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University

Last month, the Indian government detected a new mutation in the Delta coronavirus variant, prompting it to classify it as a variant of concern.

The Indian health ministry classifies a variant as one of concern as soon as there’s evidence for increased transmission.

Read more:
What’s the difference between mutations, variants and strains? A guide to COVID terminology

The new variant, known as “Delta plus”, AY.1 or B.1.617.2.1, has an extra mutation in the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the virus that causes COVID-19.

This mutation was found in samples from 48 people infected with the Delta variant in India, out of more than 45,000 samples.

So how is this variant different, and can it escape vaccine protection?

Remind me, what’s the Delta variant?

The more infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus has spread across the globe and is on track to become the world’s dominant strain, according to the World Health Organization.

The variant has been the dominant strain that led to the crippling second wave in India.

Studies have found it can replicate faster, spread more easily, and bind stronger to lung cell receptors.

Also, in a pre-print study yet to be peer-reviewed, Delhi researchers found the variant caused three-quarters of “breakthrough infections” in the city. These are infections in people who’ve been vaccinated. Around 8% of these breakthrough infections had the Kappa variant, and 76% had the Delta variant.

How is the ‘plus’ variant different?

The new mutation in the Delta variant was first detected in Europe in March.

In June, COVID patients in India were also found to have the mutant virus. These developments have raised concerns.

Some scientists in India fear the mutation may fuel another wave of infections in the country.

The mutation in the spike protein of the virus, however, is not new. Known as “K417N”, it has been previously reported in the Beta variant first found in South Africa. The Beta variant with this mutation has shown an ability to escape the antibodies conferred by COVID vaccination, at least to some extent. In other words, there’s the possibility COVID vaccines will not protect against this mutation so effectively.

Will vaccines work against Delta plus?

According to the Indian health ministry, Delta plus could have a similar ability to evade immunity and an ability to reduce the effect of monoclonal antibody therapies used to treat COVID.

The mutation is worrying because it’s located on a key portion of the virus, the spike protein, used to penetrate human cells.

Previous mutations have been on the “receptor binding domain” of the spike protein that allows the virus to attach to the receptors in our cells.

The unique mutations in the Delta variant mean the virus can escape the immune system to some extent. Indeed, Delta has shown to reduce efficacy of vaccines somewhat. This means a single dose of vaccine may offer reduced protection.

However, a second dose has been shown to produce enough antibodies against symptomatic infection and severe disease. It’s important to remember most COVID vaccines don’t provide absolute sterilising immunity, but work to reduce the severity of disease.

UK researchers found the Pfizer vaccine had an efficacy of 33% against Delta after a single shot, and 88% after both doses. In the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the efficacy was just 33% after the first dose but went up to 60% after the second dose.

The Delta plus variant might have a similar degree of reduction in efficacy against the vaccines currently in use. Though we’re yet see good data on whether this is the case.

Studies are under way in India to assess the effectiveness of vaccines against Delta plus.

It’s important to note Delta plus hasn’t yet taken off substantially, and the World Health Organization hasn’t yet classified it as a variant of concern.

What do we need to do now?

Variants with increased transmissibility and the potential to escape antibodies pose a threat to efforts to control and mitigate the pandemic. And countries with low vaccination rates may see new outbreaks.

How should our response change? Despite the mutations, no extra special measures need to be taken. We must continue to get maximum numbers of people vaccinated, increase genomic surveillance to track the evolution of the virus, and follow COVID-appropriate behaviour.

Sunit K. Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What’s the ‘Delta plus’ variant? And can it escape vaccines? An expert explains – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-delta-plus-variant-and-can-it-escape-vaccines-an-expert-explains-163644

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa England, Senior Lecturer, Griffith Law School, Griffith University

As the health of Australia’s environment continues to decline, the federal government is wagering on the ability of private markets to help solve the problem. So is this a wise move? The evidence is not at all encouraging.

This year’s federal budget included A$32.1 million to promote so-called “biodiversity stewardship”, in which farmers who adopt more sustainable practices can earn money on private markets. The funding will be used to trial new programs to protect existing native vegetation, implement a certification scheme and set up a trading platform.

It all sounds very promising. But sadly, the experience of environmental markets and certification schemes to date suggests farmers may not embrace the opportunities. In fact, preliminary research funded by the government suggests the odds are well and truly stacked against this approach succeeding.

Environmental markets cannot adequately compensate for decades of diminished government funding for long term, reliable measures to promote better land management.

What’s the plan all about?

Agriculture covers 58% of Australia’s land mass. This means farmers are crucial to maintaining a healthy environment upon which production, communities and the economy depend.

Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said the new funding means farmers will be paid to undertake biodiversity projects – “a win-win for farmers and the environment”. In an interview with the ABC, Littleproud said “we want the market to come and pay our farmers for this, not the Australian taxpayer”.

The new funding will pay for:

• a “carbon + biodiversity” pilot project to develop a market-based mechanism to reward farmers for increasing biodiversity

• an “enhanced remnant vegetation” pilot that will pay farmers to protect remnant native vegetation with high conservation value

• a proposed “Australian Farm Biodiversity Certification Scheme” to identify best-practice ways to sustain and build biodiversity.

So how do these markets work? Farmers and other land managers undertake environmental projects such as protecting endangered native species, increasing tree cover or reducing competition from invasive pest species. These projects have been assessed and accredited – usually by a government entity or independent third party – to ensure their integrity.

Farmers earn “credits” in exchange for the activity they undertake, which are then sold to “funders” such as corporations that want to improve their environmental credentials, philanthropic organisations and others.

The government has previously committed A$34 million to develop and trial biodiversity stewardship approaches. This included A$4 million to the National Farmers Federation (NFF) to start developing a certification scheme.

Read more:
A lone tree makes it easier for birds and bees to navigate farmland, like a stepping stone between habitats

‘Workability’ problems

In 2020, the NFF engaged the Australian Farm Institute (AFI) to evaluate the literature on existing certification schemes and to gauge landholders’ views. The report identified myriad problems.

The AFI noted several issues surrounding data collection and reporting. Certification schemes are data-hungry: they require baseline data (information collected before a project starts), measurable outcomes and a way to monitor progress and verify results. But diminished public spending means such data are often not readily available.

Also, biodiversity conservation can take decades. This can conflict with the interests of farmers, and of project funders that often operate within shorter planning horizons. This may limit the type, credibility and longevity of projects accredited for funding.

And many existing schemes are yet to demonstrate, on a cost-benefit analysis, any appreciable economic advantage to farmers. Under the Queensland Land Restoration Fund scheme, for example, the AFI said “farmers generally want more money than is offered for the carbon credits produced”. If that remains the case, widespread uptake seems unlikely.

Barriers to participation

The time, energy and costs of applying to participate in a biodiversity stewardship scheme can limit participation. For instance, the AFI’s review of stakeholder views noted it took one Queensland farmer 18 months to navigate the application process under the state’s Land Restoration Fund. And the fund involves hefty startup costs, including A$15,000-20,000 for a baseline biodiversity report and A$10,000 for initial certification.

Some schemes have attempted to get around this. For example, the Land Restoration Fund now offers to pay the costs of third-party agents employed to prepare applications. But overall administrative costs remain substantial and are likely to remain a deterrent to smaller operators.

Rules governing certification schemes can also penalise early adopters of sustainable farming methods. The schemes often require “additionality”, which means farmers cannot be rewarded for undertaking activity that would have occurred had the scheme not existed. So those already using best-practice methods – such as minimum tillage, organic farming or retaining native vegetation – often cannot take part. This is a particularly sore point for many farmers.

And almost inevitably in environmental stewardship schemes, ongoing funding to farmers is premised on progress against pre-determined benchmarks, such as storing a specified amount of carbon in landscapes by planting trees. Unfortunately, life in the bush is far from pre-determined. Disruptive events – such as drought, fire, falling commodity prices or new trade barriers – are run of the mill.

It’s a big stretch for corporate funders and contract negotiators to accommodate these unknown variables in their benchmarks. This means farmers must insure themselves against natural events (to the extent available) adding again to the costs of participation.

Read more:
US scheme used by Australian farmers reveals the dangers of trading soil carbon to tackle climate change

Nature belongs to all of us

Land managers are the primary stewards of Australia’s unique environment. Yet they receive the least government funding of any OECD country aside from New Zealand.

The environment needs immediate and sustained support. Whatever the lure and potential of environmental markets and certification schemes, the evidence strongly suggests private funding should not be relied on to preserve, restore and sustain our natural landscapes.

The environment is a public good, and requires adequate and substantial public funding.

Read more:
Australia’s threatened species plan has failed on several counts. Without change, more extinctions are assured

Philippa England does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Nature is a public good. A plan to save it using private markets doesn’t pass muster – https://theconversation.com/nature-is-a-public-good-a-plan-to-save-it-using-private-markets-doesnt-pass-muster-161361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University

Is light a wave or particle? — Ishan, age 15, Dubai

Hi Ishan! Thanks for your great question.

Light can be described both as a wave and as a particle. There are two experiments in particular that have revealed the dual nature of light.

When we’re thinking of light as being made of of particles, these particles are called “photons”. Photons have no mass, and each one carries a specific amount of energy. Meanwhile, when we think about light propagating as waves, these are waves of electromagnetic radiation. Other examples of electromagnetic radiation include X-rays and ultraviolet radiation.

It’s worth remembering light — regardless of whether it’s behaving like a wave or particles — will always travel at roughly 300,000 kilometres per second. The speed of light as it travels through space (or another vacuum) is the fastest phenomenon in the universe, as far as we know.

The double-slit experiment

Imagine you have a bucket of tennis balls. Two metres in front of you is a solid panel with two holes in it. A metre behind that panel is a wall. You dip each ball in red paint and throw it at one hole, and then the other. A successful throw will leave a red mark on the wall behind, leaving a specific pattern of roundish dots.

Now, suppose you shoot a single beam of light at the same panel with holes in it, on the same trajectory as the tennis balls. If light is a beam of particles, or in other words a beam of photons, you would expect to see a similar pattern to that made by the tennis balls where the light particles strike the wall.

That, however, isn’t what you see. Instead, you see a complex pattern of stripes. Why?

This is because light, in this situation, acts like a wave. When we shoot a beam of light through the holes, it breaks into two beams. The two resulting waves then interfere with each other to become either stronger (constructive interference) or weaker (destructive interference).

The waves create a lattice pattern, which results in a series of stripes on the wall. In the above image, the stripes are larger and brighter at places where the waves join. The gaps between the stripes are the result of destructive interference, and the stripes are the result of constructive interference.

The photoelectric effect

The above experiment shows light behaving as a wave. But Albert Einstein showed us we can also describe light as being made up of individual particles of energy: photons. This is necessary to account for something called the “photoelectric effect”.

When you shoot light at a sheet of metal, the metal emits electrons: particles that are electrically charged. This is the photoelectric effect.

Prior to Einstein, scientists tried to explain the photoelectric effect by assuming light only takes the form of a wave. To understand their reasoning, imagine ripples in a pond. The ripples have peaks where the wave rises up, and troughs where it dips down.

Read more:
Curious Kids: how do ripples form and why do they spread out across the water?

Now imagine there’s also a boat in the pond with Lego soldiers aboard. As the ripples reach the boat, they have the potential to throw the soldiers off. The more energy the ripples carry, the greater the force with which the soldiers will be thrown off.

And since each ripple can potentially throw off a soldier, the more ripples that reach the boat within a certain time limit, the more soldiers we can expect will be thrown off during that time.

Light waves also have peaks and troughs and therefore ripple in a similar manner. In the wave theory of light, these oscillations are linked to two properties of light: intensity and frequency.

Simply put, the frequency of a light wave is the number of peaks that pass a point in space in a given period (like when a certain number of ripples strike the boat within a specific time). The intensity corresponds to the energy of the wave (like the energy carried by each ripple in our pond).

Scientists in the 19th century pictured electrons on a sheet of metal as behaving similarly to the Lego soldiers on our raft. When light strikes the metal, the ripples should throw the electrons off.

The greater the intensity (the energy of the ripples) the faster the electrons will fly off, they thought. The higher the frequency within a specific time period, the greater the number of electrons that will get thrown off during that time — right?

What we actually see is the complete opposite! It’s the frequency of the light hitting the metal which determines the speed of the electrons as they shoot off. Meanwhile the intensity of the light, or how much energy it carries, actually determines the number of electrons flying away.

Einstein’s explanation

Einstein had a great explanation for this peculiar observation. He hypothesised light is made of particles, and is in fact not a wave. He then linked the intensity of light to the number of photons in a beam, and the frequency of light to how much energy each photon carries.

When more photons are shot at the metal (greater intensity), there are more collisions between the photons and electrons, so a greater number of electrons are emitted. Thus, the intensity of the light determines the number of electrons emitted, rather than the speed with which they fly off.

When light’s frequency is increased and each photon carries more energy, then each electron also takes more energy from the collision — and will therefore fly off with more speed.

This explanation earned Einstein a Nobel Prize in 1921.

Wave or particle?

Considering all of the above, one question remains: is light a wave that sometimes looks like a particle, or a particle that sometimes looks like a wave? There is disagreement about this.

My money is on light being a wave that displays particle-like properties under certain conditions. But this remains a controversial issue — one that takes us into the exciting realm of quantum mechanics. I encourage you to dig deeper and make up your own mind!

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why is the sky blue and where does it start?

Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Curious Kids: is light a wave or a particle? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-is-light-a-wave-or-a-particle-162514

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Associate Professor/ Principal Research Fellow, Griffith University

Phones are ringing off the hook at GP clinics with people desperate to know when and how they can be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Every time there is a change in recommendations or advice, medical receptions field calls from concerned people trying to book in to talk to a GP or to cancel bookings. This is on top of supporting patients and juggling the extra workload required to perform COVID-19 triage, screening and telehealth.

GPs and practice nurses are considered central and front line in Australia’s primary care COVID-19 response. However, GP receptionists are one step in front.

Their role has changed considerably during the pandemic, taking on functions and learning new skills no-one planned for. We must not forget them and the stressful work they do.

All in a day’s work

Medical receptionists are an integral part of general practice teams and GP clinics would be challenged to exist without them. Doctors, nurses and other staff rely on medical receptionists to create a friendly, welcoming and well-organised front-of-clinic for patients.

Some people assume medical receptionists “just” answer phone calls, notify doctors when patients have arrived and make follow-up appointments. But this not only understates their true impact and influence on our health system, it does not acknowledge the challenges and pressures of their work.

Read more:
How can younger Australians decide about the AstraZeneca vaccine? A GP explains

Long before the pandemic, medical receptionists were increasingly undertaking clinical duties, performing tasks involving direct patient assessment, monitoring and therapy.

Medical receptionists were typically in this situation because of a lack of financial support for practice nurses. But, given receptionists are not trained health professionals and are continuously handling confidential information about patients, there’s the risk they may be held legally liable for making a mistake.

Then came the pandemic

The role of medical receptionists has profoundly changed due to the pandemic, though they have not being included in pandemic planning.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has said many receptionists have been providing health and safety advice to patients and the wider community.

They are routinely asking patients questions about their travel history and symptoms, and monitoring body temperature to assess the risk of a patient being infected with COVID-19, despite not being trained to make clinical decisions.

They are increasingly performing basic triage over the phone and at the front desk, essentially assessing “how sick” a patient is and how timely their care needs to be.

Particularly during the pandemic, it is usually their decision whether a patient is granted a face-to-face appointment, seen in their car, placed in an isolation room for their consultation, or asked to go to the hospital instead.

Medical receptionists are also relied on for technical support for telehealth and to train clinicians and patients to use it.

Deciding if a patient is suitable for telehealth alone requires a basic understanding of what the doctor might need. We wouldn’t expect any medically untrained person to make these decisions, yet we expect our receptionists to.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Scott Morrison’s AstraZeneca ‘hand grenade’ turns into cluster bomb

No wonder it’s stressful

Medical receptionists are rightly concerned about contracting COVID-19 as they are so close to unwell patients in the waiting room.

Threats of violence from frightened patients are also now a reality. And when a patient has not been booked in correctly, or worse, when a patient enters a consultation room showing COVID-19 symptoms, they cop dissatisfaction from clinicians and patients alike.

The emotional demand on medical receptionists is also very high. Supporting clinical teams and their personal feelings and expressions is now part of the job, as well as advocating for, and empathising with patients.

They do all this for an average A$23.96 an hour, much less than administrative or secretary work outside the health-care sector.

Training and support are critical

There is no required qualification to become a medical receptionist. However, courses such as a Certificate III in Business Administration or Certificate IV in Health Administration are recommended. Truthfully, no training exists to equip medical receptionists for the additional pressures of the coronavirus pandemic.

Informal tips are circulating about how practice owners can support staff to avoid burnout, and also how medical receptionists can enhance their clinical and triage work.

Unfortunately, current tips and training do not address the fundamental problem of medical receptionists not being recognised, trained or paid accordingly for their growing clinical, management and administrative work.

Get vaccinated, be kind

GP clinics still play a vital role in getting Australians vaccinated and helping us emerge from the pandemic. That’s on top of their existing role.

Receptionists are at the front line of this pandemic, changing what they do at a moment’s notice to keep the rest of their teams and community safe. Their many hardships are well overdue for our respect and recognition.

Tracey Johnson, CEO of Inala Primary Care, a large GP clinic and charity in Queensland, contributed to this article.

Lauren Ball receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, RACGP Foundation, VicHealth and Queensland Health. Lauren is an Executive Committee member of the Australasian Association of Academic Primary Care and on the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Australian Journal of General Practice.

David is an Executive Committee member of the Australasian Association of Academic Primary Care.

Katelyn Barnes is an Executive Committee member of the Australasian Association of Academic Primary Care.

– ref. Be kind: GP receptionists are taking the heat with every policy update during COVID, vaccines included – https://theconversation.com/be-kind-gp-receptionists-are-taking-the-heat-with-every-policy-update-during-covid-vaccines-included-160532

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Braden Hill, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Edith Cowan University

Earlier this week, online influencer Oli London responded to criticism after saying they identify as Korean. Having undergone surgeries to change their appearance, they equated being “transracial” with the experiences of transgender people who affirm their gender.

The same reasoning behind London’s Korean identity (they have asked to be called Jimin after a K-Pop star) can be compared to that of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as Black and made headlines in 2015. Debates about “transracialism” followed. Unfortunately, it seems we haven’t learned much in this space.

At their core, London’s words and actions are a prime example of racism, cultural appropriation, and transphobia, enacted from a perspective of considerable privilege. Trans and gender diverse experiences don’t equate with someone deciding to change their appearance to be part of a group whose experiences, community and struggles they can’t fully understand.

Race and gender are not built the same

Gender is our internal sense of self, whether that be man, woman, neither or both.

Most people have an idea about their gender at two to three years old — this may not align with the sex assigned to them at birth.

Unlike gender, race presents as categorised (often physical) traits that are socially constructed and understood. You can’t inherit your gender, this is internal and something individual to you — but you do inherit the social construct of race. There is also much more to one’s racial identity than physical appearance — it’s also about culture, community, connection and even trauma.

While multicultural communities and LGBTQ+ experiences of discrimination are sometimes compared, it is important to understand these experiences are different and complex. This is particularly the case, for example, in considering trans people of colour and their experiences of both racism and transphobia.

People who face discrimination based on their race or cultural background can usually go home to members of their family who understand them. This is often not the case for trans and gender diverse people.

Race and gender have very different histories, understandings, experiences, and implications in the face of discrimination. The very idea of being able to transition to a difference race discredits trans and gender diverse people’s experiences of gender affirmation. It also undermines the importance of cultural connections for many communities.

Read more:
Explainer: what does it mean to be ‘cisgender’?

Picking and choosing

London, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, has actively chosen a “transracial” identity. But trans and gender diverse people’s decision to transition (whether that be social, medical and/or legal) is almost always involuntary and out of necessity to live their lives authentically.

Almost 50% of trans young people in Australia have attempted suicide at least once in their lives. Trans and gender diverse young people experience higher levels of psychological distress than their cisgender peers.

This is not because there is anything inherently wrong with trans people, but because of how trans people are treated by others. Conflating racial identity with gender identity implies that being trans is a choice, and therefore so is race. The reality is that transitioning as a trans person is a difficult and taxing process, one that can be dangerous but also lifesaving and celebrated.

It is racist to think someone can pick and choose parts of a race or culture they like, then distance themselves from that culture when it suits them. They avoid the burden of discrimination while reaping the rewards of white privilege, taking the necessary resources and voices from the communities who need it.

There is a difference between affirming your gender as a trans person, which doesn’t harm anyone else, and choosing to live and appropriate another culture.

Read more:
How genes and evolution shape gender – and transgender – identity

What’s more, the word “transracial” is already in use, usually referring to adoption practices in which white parents adopt children of colour. So it’s misleading when used to talk about someone changing their appearance.

Gender understandings can also be different based on their cultural context.

The gender binary we’ve come to think of as usual — male and female — has previously been enforced upon people, cultures and countries through colonisation. Rigid understandings of gender are imposed upon cultures where gender fluidity was previously more accepted.

Trans and gender diverse experiences have existed in many Indigenous cultures around the world for thousands of years, including in Australia.

Read more:
New research shows how Indigenous LGBTIQ+ people don’t feel fully accepted by either community

Amplifying diversity

It’s important for us to acknowledge that talking about “transracial” identities as something you can be for or against only further marginalises and harms people of colour and trans and gender diverse people. This marginalisation is compounded for trans people of colour.

Instead of the pursuit of fame and followers, we need to prioritise amplifying the experiences of diverse peoples in ways that not only focus on discrimination and abuse, but also celebrate people being their authentic selves.

s.lane@ecu.edu.au was previously a board member with TransFolk of WA and still sometimes volunteers with this organisation at events and through community initiatives, though not often.

Braden Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. No, you can’t identify as ‘transracial’. But you can affirm your gender – https://theconversation.com/no-you-cant-identify-as-transracial-but-you-can-affirm-your-gender-163729

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Krystian Seibert, Industry Fellow, Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology

The Australian government introduced new regulations last week that could have a major chilling effect across Australia’s diverse charities sector.

The government’s aim was clear: the regulations are intended to target “activist organisations”, and specifically crack down on “unlawful behaviour”.

Despite this rhetoric, there is no evidence unlawful behaviour by charities is a problem of any significance. By clamping down on charities in this way, the government is not only curtailing their ability to organise peaceful protests, it is imposing more unnecessary red tape on an already highly-regulated sector.

What would the regulations do?

The regulations would give the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) new powers to take action against a charity if it commits, or fails to adequately ensure its resources aren’t used to commit, certain types of “summary offences”.

These are generally a less serious type of criminal offence, and can include acts such as trespassing, unlawful entry, malicious damage or vandalism.

If the ACNC commissioner believes a charity is not complying with the regulations, they would be able to take enforcement action, which may include deregistering the charity. This would lead to the charity losing tax concessions — one of the incentives for people to donate to them.

In effect, the regulations mean that if a charity organised a protest in front of a government department and initially refused to leave, this could be considered trespassing. And this could then be grounds to have the charity deregistered.

Are these regulations necessary?

There is little, if any, evidence of a need for the regulations.

First, a comprehensive review of the ACNC legislation commissioned by the government in 2018 did not identify any issues with unlawful behaviour by charities.

In fact, the review recommended removing the ACNC’s existing power to take action against charities that commit serious breaches of the law. It pointed out that charities must already comply with all laws that they are subject to, and it is not the ACNC’s responsibility to monitor compliance or impose sanctions for breaches.

Despite this, the new regulations would extend the reach of the ACNC and expand its existing powers even further.

Read more:
Animal rights activists in Melbourne: green-collar criminals or civil ‘disobedients’?

And importantly, there is no evidence charities — or their staffs or volunteers — are engaging in widespread unlawful activity. When questioned at a recent Senate Estimates hearing, ACNC Commissioner Gary Johns said the commission’s data did not indicate this was a problem.

Even the government’s own regulatory impact assessment asserts only a “small number” of charities have engaged in unlawful behaviour. However, even this claim is not backed up by solid evidence, with the assessment saying it is based on

media coverage in recent years in relation to protests on forestry, mining and farming lands.

Charities are already highly regulated

Charities in Australia are already highly regulated and subject to a broad range of obligations. They must also abide by any number of laws, for example, occupational health and safety and criminal laws.

And the ACNC already has extensive investigation and compliance powers. If charities breach any of the laws they are subject to, they can be sanctioned just like other organisations — and the same applies to their staff.

In addition, charities are already required to take steps to ensure their directors comply with duties, such as acting with reasonable care and diligence. This includes monitoring and managing risks arising from a charity’s activities.

Drafted in a vague way

Perhaps most concerningly, the proposed regulations are worded in a very vague manner, and although improvements were made in response to public consultation on a draft version, major problems remain.

First, they require a charity to “maintain reasonable internal control procedures” to prevent its resources from being used to promote unlawful activities.

According to the regulations, this could cover things such as who can access or use a charity’s funds, premises or social media accounts, and what kind of training charity directors and employees must undertake.

What is “reasonable” in this context involves making very subjective judgements. While the ACNC will provide guidance to charities on this, many organisations will still face considerable uncertainty.

Read more:
Australian charities are well regulated, but changes are needed to cut red tape

Further, the regulations would not require a conviction, the laying of charges, or even a formal allegation of an offence being committed before the ACNC can take action. The wording only refers to “acts or omissions that may be dealt with” as a summary offence.

This is very open-ended language, but the crux of it is that a charity could be deregistered because it did something the ACNC commissioner thinks is a summary offence. The action itself, however, may not actually meet the criteria for a summary offence because that’s something only a court can determine.

The ACNC commissioner is the ultimate decision maker on these matters. The regulations do not include any factors or criteria that need to be considered when making a decision, other than saying the ACNC “may” (there’s that word again) consult with law enforcement or other relevant authorities.

The chilling effect of the regulations

Even if a charity is deregistered but then successfully appeals a decision, it may no longer have access to tax concessions, it may lose its donors and other supporters, and it may have its reputation tarnished within the community.

The ACNC seeks to implement the law as it understands it. Its focus is on providing guidance to charities rather than using strong enforcement powers straight away. But the vagueness and breadth of the regulations may lead to misunderstandings or regulatory overreach, and create a more uncertain environment for charities.

They will also impose yet another requirement that charity boards and management must consider. Given charities are already well-regulated, if anything, they need unnecessary red tape removed rather than having more of it imposed on them.

And the regulations will likely have a chilling effect. Charities will be more cautious when it comes to organising public advocacy activities such as peaceful protests — or steer clear of them altogether — in order to avoid falling afoul of the regulations. Such activities are an important part of Australia’s democracy.

Can the regulations be stopped?

Although the regulations have been made, they cannot come into force until they have been tabled in both chambers of parliament, and the disallowance period has passed.

If a disallowance motion is successful in the House or Senate, then the regulations will be invalid and will not take effect. Given the government does not have a majority in the Senate, this is a possibility.

Much is riding on the crossbenchers — not just the impact the regulations would have on individual charities, but also the kind of society we want Australia to be.

Krystian Seibert was an adviser to a former Australian Assistant Treasurer, and in this role he was responsible for overseeing the establishment of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and its regulatory framework. He is currently a Member of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission’s ‘Sector Forum’ which is a consultative body comprising charity sector representatives. He also works for Philanthropy Australia, the peak body for philanthropy in Australia, which made a submission opposing the draft regulations.

– ref. The government is clamping down on charities — and it could have a chilling effect on peaceful protest – https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-clamping-down-on-charities-and-it-could-have-a-chilling-effect-on-peaceful-protest-163493

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

Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher.

This week the pair discuss the vaccine rollout, and the ongoing debate between the nation’s health experts about who should get what jab.

The government has introduced a new indemnity scheme for GPs administering the AstraZeneca vaccine, but many state health officers are adamant the vaccine is not suitable for younger people.

The pair also discuss the winners and losers of the new Nationals frontbench.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the vexed vaccine rollout – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-vexed-vaccine-rollout-163799