Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edith Jennifer Hill, PhD Candidate, Flinders University

Social media is currently filled with working from home content: from our friends, but also from celebrities.

As late night hosts shift to broadcasting from home, I am filled with nostalgia for a recent past: YouTube in its infancy, soon after its birth in 2005.

Back then, we saw glimpses of private lives filmed on laptop cameras in bedrooms. Now, it’s household names filming segments from home. Jimmy Fallon is being interrupted by his children. The Project is Zooming self-isolating celebrities. Ellen Degeneres hosts interviews from her couch.

In the early days of YouTube, the platform was smaller. There were intimate communities formed around specific topics and people: gaming, make up, pop culture. An opportunity for authentic participation and self-expression for everyone.

We are all feeling nostalgia for a pre-COVID-19 world. Nostalgia doesn’t only have to look back decades. It can occur for our recent past. And it can also be good for us.

Nostalgia provides us with a reminder of the good times, and the determination to stay inside and flatten the curve, so we can return to the activities for which we felt nostalgia for in the first place.

Perhaps a nostalgia for 2005 YouTube is a rarer type of longing, but I find myself reflecting on the time where every video filmed in a bedroom was a real bedroom, not a studio set.

The “full-time YouTuber”

When YouTube launched in 2005, it was a space for sharing and interacting with videos online.

In 2007, pre-roll ads began playing on videos, and by December we saw the introduction of the Partner Program, where YouTubers were able to make money from their videos. This began the advent of the “full-time YouTuber”. Brands began directly sponsoring YouTubers and we saw the beginning of people leaving their day jobs for full-time content creation.

As the platform became more commercialised, professional content made by established networks was promoted for monetary purposes and those original ideals became marginalised.

Early YouTubers were able to capitalise on the growth of the platform and build audiences of thousands, who in turn brought millions of views with the associated ad revenue. Zoe Sugg (Zoella, to her fans) began posting on her channel in 2009.

Today she has over 11 million subscribers, and her videos have been viewed over 1 billion times (with a further 855 million views on her second channel). She started as a young adult filming clothing hauls and make-up looks in her childhood bedroom. She now owns her own beauty and lifestyle brand, and is worth millions.

Live from their living room

With the social distancing and isolation requirements brought on by COVID-19, television talk shows begin to feel like early YouTube.

Jimmy Fallon is currently filming The Tonight Show “at home edition”.

The Tonight Show has always found its way on to YouTube, often to the trending page. Now, Fallon’s at-home aesthetic provides his audience layers of intimacy through personal disclosure. We now know what books he owns, that he has a coat rack by the back door (that gets left open by his kids). You can hear the piano playing through the walls. And we know his daughter lost her tooth last week because she adorably interrupted his filming to tell him so.

Whether or not we interpret this cynically – as a convenient construction of Fallon’s authenticity – it seems timely and highly relatable content right now. Millions of parents are juggling work and kids.

Georgiana Toma, a life narrative scholar, says authenticity is a vital characteristic for an online following.

Brand authenticity, she says, requires stylistic consistency, softening of commercial motives, and quality commitment. A successful way to achieve an authentic presence online is through self-disclosure.

The sense of intimacy that is created through the disclosure of personal information that the audience can relate to, can soften commercial motives. Whether it is child-rearing, product reviews, or quarantine experiences, this positively reinforces the authenticity and trustworthiness of the creator.

In the early days of YouTube, this would include divulging personal stories and sharing milestones, as well as personal struggles and turmoil. Zoella did this by openly talking about her social anxiety when it came to public appearances and large gatherings, as well as sharing career milestones like her wax figurine in Madame Tussauds.

A talk-show host is a more overtly constructed personality.

Previous viewers of Fallon “live from New York”, like David Letterman and Conan O’Brien before him, are aware of the script, the lights, and the set. But with celebrities now restricted to broadcasting from their homes, we see them forced off-script. There are interruptions, noises of families and lived-in homes. It has always been common to see a child running through the background of a YouTube video, or a cat bumping the camera as they walk across your keyboard. We are now seeing them for the first time with talk show hosts.

For many celebrities, the self-disclosure required to strengthen that interpersonal connection has come from sharing their own distancing or isolation narratives. Sharing their homes and difficulties with isolation resonates with an audience and signifies that we are all in this together (sans the mansion).

Intimate spaces

Last week on The Project, Australian singer Troye Sivan was interviewed in his childhood bedroom after a day self-isolating and refurbishing furniture with his dad.

While The Project is still filming in the studio, the set looks markedly different than it did a few weeks ago. The hosts sit far apart, correspondents call in for segments, and their crew provide the guests with applause rather than a live audience.

The image of Sivan sitting at home in a T-shirt suggested a relaxed, private and authentic self.

Longtime fans might view this as a return to his online roots. Sivan started his YouTube channel in October 2007, when he was 13. In these early videos, Sivan uploaded concerts he performed in and covers of songs performed at home. Now, Sivan has over 7 million subscribers and over 1 billion views on YouTube. He has achieved chart success, selling 1.3 million albums.

The Project interview re-constructs Sivan’s original authentic aesthetic, as he once again films from his childhood bedroom.

When we watch videos online, we often do so from the comfort of our private spaces: our homes, our bedrooms. So, when we watch talk shows filming their own homes, a sense of connection, of shared experience, comes naturally. Watching like this encourages us to feel like we are talking to a friend.

Being invited into someone’s home becomes a point of commonality and hospitality in times of isolation. Even considering the obvious economic disparities, we all have isolation in common.

Janice Peck, a professor in media studies, discusses the belief that communication can guide people out of dilemmas. This makes talk shows compatible with therapeutic discourse, with focus on confession and interactive participation.

YouTube also invites this, with presenters often ending their videos with the classic “let me know what you guys think in the comments below!”

Read more: Friday essay: YouTube apologies and reality TV revelations – the rise of the public confession

Now we don’t have in-person connections in our daily lives with those outside our households, this interactive participation online has risen in importance.

Going meta

In this nostalgic turn, celebrities are utilising traditional YouTube tropes in their content, through framing, background, and tone.

Jimmy Kimmel “live from his house” quizzes his children for a homespun version of the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The framing and background of this clip is strikingly similar to other creators online, like YouTube veteran Philip DeFrano. In these videos, Kimmel and DeFranco ask their children questions while sitting on high bar stools with on-the-table microphone stands. To the amusement of their children they ask, “Who is your favourite, Mummy or Daddy?”

On an episode of The Tonight Show: At Home Edition, Jimmy Fallon fulfils a classic YouTube trope: The Q&A video. For years, YouTubers have been answering their viewers questions in this format. After his monologue, the show cuts to a clip of Fallon walking with his wife for the segment “Ask the Fallons”. During the walk, he recounts the story of his proposal, as well as some personal anecdotes. Q&A videos have always been used as a way for the audience to connect and interact directly with YouTubers.

Relatable or die

On Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, the host interviews politician Katie Porter, joking about bad wifi connections on Zoom calls – an experience every single person working from home can relate to. While they discuss the current state of COVID-19 testing in America, their interview is scattered with personal anecdotes.

The exchanges elicit the feeling of watching your colleague on the morning Zoom call, dealing with wandering children and fielding offers of multiple sourdough starters.

But self-disclosure can backfire.

In a now deleted video, Ellen DeGeneres filmed the first at-home episode of her talk show in her beautifully decorated home, and compared self-isolation to jail.

Talking about a collective experience in a way few people can understand violates the collaborative partnership of early 2000s YouTube. It appears elitist and tone deaf because it fails to recognise more common experiences of isolation.

Changing channels?

Will YouTube return to “normal” once the global pandemic loosens its hold?

We will most likely see talk show hosts return to their studios, and a significant drop in “how to be productive working from home” videos. But this new trend of talk show hosts at home may stick around if it sees continues success throughout quarantine.

People who found fame early on YouTube by bringing us into their homes are now celebrities. Now traditional celebrities are bringing us home too. They are utilising features inherent to YouTube and creating more opportunities for connection.

We can view the self-disclosure of talk shows hosts filming from home as relatable and charming while we experience self-isolation, or cynically as a convenient construction.

Regardless of intention, we respond because of our ongoing desire for the self-disclosure of those we hold in regard.

– ref. Friday essay: when television hosts take their shows home they fuel nostalgia – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-when-television-hosts-take-their-shows-home-they-fuel-nostalgia-136240

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Power, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University

The public health response to COVID-19 has placed unprecedented limits on social contact. Many people may go without physical sexual intimacy for an extended (and indefinite) period.

Given human touch and connection are fundamental to humanity, this could have significant implications for the well-being of those who are single or apart from their sexual partners.

The media has reported people turning to digital technologies to find sexual pleasure and human contact during periods of social isolation.

But what does research tell us about the capacity for technologies to meet human needs for sex, touch and intimacy?

Making love alone

Solo sex is one solution to lack of sexual contact and well within current health guidelines. People are using technology to enhance this.

Reportedly, traffic to the pornography website Pornhub has increased exponentially during the COVID-19 crisis, and there has been a significant leap in sales of popular sex toys.

Meanwhile, erotic fiction has found a new fan base by drawing on themes of isolation and quarantine.

However, not everyone has the physical capacity to pleasure themselves and sex is also about intimacy, human connection and touch. Does the online environment allow for this?

Connecting with others

People have been seeking sex online for years.

COVID-19 is accelerating this trend, prompting increased use of dating apps for chatting, cyber-flirting and sexting.

Read more: The safest sex you’ll never have: how coronavirus is changing online dating

Real-life “hook ups” may be off the table for a while, but research shows that cyber-flirting and sexting can enhance sexual creativity and fantasy, help with sexual and relationship satisfaction in real life and, for some, increase body confidence and a sense of desirability.

COVID-19 has also meant people are getting more creative with their webcams. Sex party organisers have been hosting online parties which, for some, have been their first foray into sex online. People have found this experience to be surprisingly satisfying, replicating feelings of anticipation and excitement that are similar to real-life sex.

Similarly, research on cybersex – which may involve sex with avatars rather than webcams – has shown it can enhance people’s sex lives by enabling exploration of desires and fantasies they may not feel comfortable to pursue in real life.

Along with potential for enhanced sexual satisfaction, a recent study by the Kinsey Institute showed that people who use technology for sexting or webcamming gained a sense of emotional connection as well as sexual gratification from this contact.

This included people who accessed professional webcam sex services, as well as those sexting or ‘camming with a lover or person they met online.

What about touch?

Simulating human touch is more complex.

Teledildonic devices, which are internet-connected sex toys, enable people to control their partner’s vibrator using a mobile phone app.

COVID-19 appears to have generated an increase in demand for these devices, although research is limited on the extent to which they enhance people’s sense of connection or sexual satisfaction.

Read more: Coronavirus and sex: Dos and don’ts during social distancing

Technologies are also evolving toward immersive experiences in which tactile sensation is matched with visual stimuli to evoke a more realistic sense of touch.

For example, devices such as the “Vstroker” and the “Auto-Blow2” link to virtual reality (VR) porn. The actions in the VR film (for example, oral or penetrative sex) are timed with the device functions so the visuals match the physical sensation. Research has shown VR pornography can enhance feelings of presence and arousal.

Are there risks?

Online sex brings risks along with benefits, and many of these are well-documented. Sharing erotic images or videos carries the risk of unwanted exposure though non-consensual dissemination, such as “revenge pornography”.

In recent weeks, we have also heard about widespread “Zoom-bombing”, in which people hack into online meetings on the Zoom video-conferencing app. This is clearly a risk for those using video chat platforms for sex.

Read more: From stone dildos to sexbots: how technology is changing sex

This feeds into existing concerns about data hacking, consent and inappropriate monitoring of teledildonic users by the companies that make them. Two of these companies were recently sued for collecting intimate data on users, including body temperature and vibration frequency during device use.

As social distancing continues, there are also concerns of increased catfishing, the practice of luring people into fake online relationships for financial scams.

Is online intimacy the same as being together?

One question raised in studies of sex and intimacy is whether the online environment enables a sense of human connection akin to physical presence.

Being physically close to someone allows for intimate practices that involve touch and everyday acts of care. Some research suggests online communication creates a less authentic form of intimacy or encourages people to present false versions of themselves. Trust may also be difficult to build online due to complex or limited visual cues.

However, other studies show potential for the online world to facilitate, or even enhance, closeness as people are more inclined to share personal and vulnerable details about themselves through text than face-to-face.

The future of sex?

COVID-19 may be a turning point in the use of, and attitudes toward, technologically mediated sex and intimacy.

It is too soon to know how this will play out when social isolation measures are relaxed, but for now digital technology has never been so central to human sexual and intimate connection.

– ref. Online sex parties and virtual reality porn: can sex in isolation be as fulfilling as real life? – https://theconversation.com/online-sex-parties-and-virtual-reality-porn-can-sex-in-isolation-be-as-fulfilling-as-real-life-134658

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Griffin, Infectious Diseases Fellow, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

The course of human history has been shaped by infectious diseases, and the current crisis certainly won’t be the last time.

However, we can capitalise on the knowledge gained from past experiences, and reflect on how we’re better off this time around.

Read more: Four of the most lethal infectious diseases of our time and how we’re overcoming them

1. The Plague, or ‘Black Death’ (14th Century)

While outbreaks of the plague (caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) still occur in several parts of the world, there are two that are particularly infamous.

The 200-year long Plague of Justinian began in 541 CE, wiping out millions in several waves across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and crimping the expansionary aspirations of the Roman Empire (although some scholars argue that its impact has been overstated).

Then there’s the better known 14th century pandemic, which likely emerged from China and decimated populations in Asia, Europe and Northern Africa.

Perhaps one of the greatest public health legacies to have emerged from the 14th century plague pandemic is the concept of “quarantine”, from the Venetian term “quarantena” meaning forty days.

The 14th century Black Death pandemic is thought to have catalysed enormous societal, economic, artistic and cultural reforms in Medieval Europe. It illustrates how infectious disease pandemics can be major turning points in history, with lasting impacts.

For example, widespread death caused labour shortages across feudal society, and often led to higher wages, cheaper land, better living conditions and increased freedoms for the lower class.

Various authorities lost credibility, since they were seen to have failed to protect communities from the overwhelming devastation of plague. People began to openly question long held certainties around societal structure, traditions, and religious orthodoxy.

This prompted fundamental shifts in peoples’ interactions and experience with religion, philosophy, and politics. The Renaissance period, which encouraged humanism and learning, soon followed.

The Black Death also had profound effects on art and literature, which took on more pessimistic and morbid themes. There were vivid depictions of violence and death in Biblical narratives, still seen in many Christian places of worship across Europe.

How COVID-19 will reshape our culture, and what unexpected influence it will have for generations to come is unknown. There are already clear economic changes arising from this outbreak, as some industries rise, others fall and some businesses seem likely to disappear forever.

COVID-19 may permanently normalise the use of virtual technologies for socialising, business, education, healthcare, religious worship and even government.

2. Spanish influenza (1918)

The 1918 “Spanish Flu” pandemic’s reputation as one of the deadliest in human history is due to a complex interplay between how the virus works, the immune response and the social context in which it spread.

It arose in a world left vulnerable by the preceding four years of World War I. Malnutrition and overcrowding were common.

Around 500 million people were infected – a third of the global population at the time – leading to 50-100 million deaths.

A unique characteristic of infection was its tendency to kill healthy adults between the ages of 20 and 40.

At the time, influenza infection was attributed to a bacterium (Haemophilus influenzae) rather than a virus. Antibiotics for secondary bacterial infections were still more than a decade away, and intensive care wards with mechanical ventilators were unheard of.

Clearly, our medical and scientific understanding of the ‘flu in 1918 made it difficult to combat. However, public health interventions, including quarantine, the use of face masks and bans on mass gatherings helped limit the spread in some areas, building on prior successes in controlling tuberculosis, cholera and other infectious diseases.

Australia imposed maritime quarantine, requiring all arriving ships to be cleared by Commonwealth Quarantine Officials before disembarkation. That likely delayed and reduced the Spanish flu impact on Australia, and had secondary effects on the other Pacific Islands.

The effect of maritime quarantine was most striking in Western and American Samoa, with the latter enforcing strict quarantine and experiencing no deaths. By contrast, 25% of Western Samoans died, after influenza was introduced by a ship from New Zealand.

In some cities, mass gatherings were banned, and schools, churches, theatres, dance and pool halls closed.

In the United States, cities that committed earlier, longer and more aggressively to social distancing interventions, not only saved lives, but also emerged economically stronger than those that didn’t.

Face masks and hand hygiene were popularised and sometimes enforced in cities.

In San Francisco, a Red Cross-led public education campaign was combined with mandatory mask-wearing outside the home.

This was tightly enforced in some jurisdictions by police officers issuing fines, and at times using weapons.

3. HIV/AIDS (20th century)

The first reported cases of HIV/AIDS in the Western world emerged in 1981.

Since then, around 75 million people have become infected with HIV, and about 32 million people have died.

Many readers may remember how baffling and frightening the HIV/AIDs pandemic was in the early days (and still is in many parts of the developing world).

We now understand that people living with HIV infection who are on treatment are far less likely to develop serious complications.

These treatments, known as antiretrovirals stop HIV from replicating. This can lead to an “undetectable viral load” in a person’s blood. Evidence shows that people with an undetectable viral load can’t pass the virus on to others during sex.

Condoms and PrEP (short for “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” where people take an oral antiretroviral pill once a day), can be used by people who don’t have HIV infection to reduce the risk of acquiring the virus.

Unfortunately, there are currently no proven antivirals available for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19, though research is ongoing.

The HIV pandemic taught us about the value of a well-designed public health campaign, and the importance of contact tracing. Broad testing in appropriate people is fundamental to this, to understand the extent of infection in the community and allow appropriately targeted individual and population-level interventions.

It also demonstrated that words and stigma matter; people need to feel they can test safely and be supported, rather than ostracised. Stigmatising language can fuel misconceptions, discrimination and discourage testing.

4. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) (2002-2003)

The current pandemic is the third coronavirus outbreak in the past two decades.

The first was in 2002, when SARS emerged from horseshoe bats in China and spread to at least 29 countries around the world, causing 8,098 cases and 774 deaths.

SARS was finally contained in July, 2003. SARS-CoV-2, however, appears much more easily spread than the original SARS coronavirus.

To some extent SARS was a practice run for COVID-19. Researchers focused on SARS and MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, another coronavirus that remains a problem in selected regions), are providing important foundational research for potential vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.

Knowledge gleaned from SARS may also lead to antiviral drugs to treat the current virus.

SARS also emphasised the importance of communication in a pandemic, and the need for frank, honest and timely information sharing.

Certainly, SARS was a catalyst for change in China; the government invested in enhanced surveillance systems, that facilitate the real time collection and communication of infectious diseases and syndromes from emergency departments back to a centralised government database.

This was coupled with the International Health Regulations, which requires the reporting of unusual and unexpected outbreaks of disease.

Advances in science, information technology and knowledge gained from SARS, allowed us to quickly isolate, sequence and share SARS-CoV-2 data globally. Likewise, important clinical information was distributed early to the medical community.

SARS demonstrated how quickly and comprehensively a virus could spread around the world in the era of air transportation, and the role of individual “superspreaders”.

SARS also underlined the importance of the inextricable link between human, animal and environmental health, known as “One Health”, that may facilitate the crossover of germs between species.

Finally, a crucial, but perhaps overlooked lesson from SARS is the need for sustained investment in vaccine and infectious disease treatment research.

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

Few infectious disease researchers were surprised when another coronavirus pandemic broke out. A globalised world, with overcrowded, well connected people and cities, where humans and animals live in close proximity, provides fertile conditions for infectious diseases.

We must be ever prepared for the emergence of another pandemic, and learn the lessons of history to navigate the next threat.

– ref. This isn’t the first global pandemic, and it won’t be the last. Here’s what we’ve learned from 4 others throughout history – https://theconversation.com/this-isnt-the-first-global-pandemic-and-it-wont-be-the-last-heres-what-weve-learned-from-4-others-throughout-history-136231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University

It’s hard to forget the thick smoke plumes blanketing Australia’s cities and towns during the black summer. But consecutive days of smoke haze can also come from planned burns to reduce fuel loads, and fires set after logging.

Expanding planned burning is often touted as a way to mitigate the risk of bushfires rising with climate change. But the autumn burn-off season is bad news for the COVID-19 pandemic, as smoke exposure can make us more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses.

Read more: Logging burns conceal industrial pollution in the name of ‘community safety’

In fact, doctors in the Yarra Valley, Victoria, are campaigning for better air quality monitors. They argue burn-offs are a serious health risk during this pandemic, particularly with asthma inhaler stocks in limited supply.

Yes, planned burns can be useful, but they offer limited protection from bushfires and, right now, they pose an immediate health risk. It’s a reasonable bet that planned burning will do us more harm than good in 2020.

The same can be said of other sources of smoke, including from logging regeneration burns, wood heaters, backyard burn-offs and burning fossil fuels.

How does smoke from bushfires hurt our lungs?

Smoke pollution from the black summer may have killed more than 400 people, and sent 4,000 people to the hospital.

Bushfire smoke includes fine particles – less than 2.5 micrometers in size (one micrometre is a ten-thousanth of a centimetre) – that can reach to the ends of our lungs and enter the bloodstream. They compromise our immune system, weakening our antiviral defences.

Smoke also has a toxic mix of metals and organic chemicals that include known carcinogens. Even short term exposure increases hospital admissions and ambulance call-outs in Australia for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, cardiovascular attacks and other health effects.

It’s not just humans – health impacts from smoke extends to wildlife, with smoke reducing their ability to mount an immune response and increasing their stress.

The ecological effects of smoke can also compromise animal survival, including making it harder for them to forage.

Exacerbating COVID-19

Smoke exposure causes inflammation in the lungs, as does coronavirus infection. But it’s a not a simple equation; they likely act in a synergistic way with complex interactions.

Recent studies have linked worse outcomes of COVID-19 infections with long-term cigarette smoking and air pollution, both of which have similar chemical components to wood smoke.

New research from the USA shows average air pollution with one extra microgram of fine particles per cubic metre is associated with a 15% higher death rate from COVID-19.

In other words, if COVID-19 has a base death rate of about 1 in 100, and fine particles in air pollution span from near one microgram/litre to higher than 12 in major urban centres, then the death rate could more than double to 2.65 per 100 infections.

Read more: Bushfire smoke is everywhere in our cities. Here’s exactly what you are inhaling

Research into other viral infections shows just two hours of exposure to smoke can make people more susceptible to respiratory infections. But what we’re uncertain about is if short term exposure to smoke would illicit the same dire consequences – dramatically higher death rates – as there appears to be with long-term exposure to air pollutants.

What’s more, men could be more at risk than women. Men find it harder to fight off the flu than women, and prior exposure to wood smoke can make flu symptoms worse in men.

Planned burning is under pressure

The amount and pattern of planned burning is under pressure to change. Some commentators are campaigning for increased planned burning, but others are asking for less, and the Victorian firefighter chief has said it’s no silver bullet.

While planned burns aim to reduce wildfire, it’s not yet clear whether this will ultimately alter the amount of smoke over communities.

On the one hand, planned burns could pump more smoke into the atmosphere than wildfires because larger areas need to be burned, smoke can build up and hang around for longer, and planned burns could produce more toxic smoke by burning wetter fuels.

On the other hand, planned burns have lower severity and are more patchy than wildfires, so burn less of the vegetation in a given area, potentially producing less smoke.

Read more: The burn legacy: why the science on hazard reduction is contested

What about protection? Planned burns can make firefighting easier for a few years after fire. But current rates of planned burning give little protection for houses when wildfires are driven by extreme weather.

Planned burns within a few hundred metres of houses can give protection but must occur frequently, such as less than every five years. We shouldn’t expect towns to endure local smoke pollution this often.

A matter of timing

In the context of COVID-19, the seasonal timing of fires is also important.

Flu risk is lowest in the summer months, and COVID-19 might peak in late winter. This means smoke from wildfires in summer may have less impact than smoke from planned burns in autumn and spring.

Read more: How does bushfire smoke affect our health? 6 things you need to know

The coming summer is unlikely to bring a repeat of last summer’s fires because so much forest is already burnt.

So, even if COVID-19 spills over into 2021, the compounding smoke risk from wildfires is likely to be lower than smoke from planned burns in autumn and spring.

Not worth it

All things considered, it’s not worth the health risk to conduct planned burns, logging regeneration burns or other burning this year while the pandemic continues to sweep through the country, particularly in areas close to towns such as the Yarra Valley.

Still, whether or not planned burns will change our total exposure to smoke from bushfires, the effects of climate change are definitely bringing more fire and with it more smoke.

This means we can expect to have to deal with interactions between virus risks and smoke risks more often in the future.

– ref. The smoke from autumn burn-offs could make coronavirus symptoms worse. It’s not worth the risk – https://theconversation.com/the-smoke-from-autumn-burn-offs-could-make-coronavirus-symptoms-worse-its-not-worth-the-risk-136230

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Hurley, Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

The university sector faces cumulative losses of up to A$19 billion over the next three years due to lost international student revenue.

Modelling from the Mitchell Institute shows the next big hit will come mid-year when $2 billion in annual tuition fees is wiped from the sector as international students are unable to travel to Australia to start their courses for second semester.

Such losses are not just a university problem. ABS data show for every $1 lost in university tuition fees, there is another $1.15 lost in the broader economy due to international student spending.

This means the Australian economy could lose more than $40 billion by 2023 because of reduced numbers of higher education international students.

We estimate each six-monthly intake missed due to closed borders will deliver an annual economic blow comparable to when Australia’s auto manufacturing industry shut down (worth around $5 billion), or the loss of Australia’s $4.1 billion annual vegetable crop.

Our modelling shows there will be no quick return to pre-coronavirus normality either, or “snapback” as Prime Minister Scott Morrison described it.

Missed intakes disrupt the pipeline of international students – who usually study for two to three years – so lost revenue continues to impact budgets for several years.

Forecasts tell a disturbing story

We looked at university finance data and enrolment trends. We modelled two scenarios: one with a relatively quick recovery of international student enrolments beginning in 2021, and the other with an extended travel ban that meant no new international students until 2022.

Both scenarios were disastrous for the higher education sector.

The first showed the university sector losing about $10 billion, though international student revenue would largely return to normal by 2023.

But the second scenario, incorporating extended travel bans, had a longer-lasting effect. With the government announcing the borders are likely to remain closed for “quite some time to come” the worst-case scenario seems more likely.

Over the Easter weekend, the government announced a package that guarantees funding for the estimated enrolments of domestic students in 2020, despite whether the actual enrolments are fewer than estimated. The package includes about $100 million in waived regulatory fees and funding for an additional 20,000 short online courses in national priority areas such as nursing and IT.

This will fall well short of plugging the gap international students will leave behind.

Based on historical funding rates per student, the government would need to fund another 1.9 million short courses, and universities find the same number of students to enrol, to make up for the projected losses in international student revenue.

Financial position of universities

This modelling was part of the Mitchell Institute’s more in-depth investigation into higher education funding. Our analysis shows total university revenue from international students grew by 137% over the past decade. More than 40% of the sector’s annual student revenue now comes from international students.

International students delivered almost $9 billion in annual revenue to universities in 2018, accounting for around 58% of student revenue at two of Australia’s most prestigious universities, the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney.

Despite the revenue windfall, growth has been uneven. Group of Eight universities experienced the biggest growth in international students, tripling their international student revenue over the past decade. For other universities, particularly smaller and regional universities, revenue grew at a much slower rate.

Even though some balance sheets are healthy, there is limited ability to weather a protracted downturn. University surpluses were only A$1.5 billion across the whole sector in 2018. The sudden and steep decline in international student enrolments is a significant economic challenge for universities.

The outlook for universities

Australia’s universities have relied on international students as a source of growth for a long time. While the amount the universities receive per domestic student has been virtually flat in real terms over the past decade, fees each international student pays have increased by over 50%.

With this revenue stream suddenly threatened, the education experience of domestic students will suffer. Universities will need to make deep cuts to staff and courses without further assistance.

This will come at a time when Australia will need its higher education sector as part of any COVID-19 recovery. It is likely demand from domestic students for university places will rise because of workers looking to re-skill and up-skill.

University enrolments from domestic students have increased during previous recessions and the federal education minister has encouraged those who are out of work to undertake study.

Also, one quarter of school leavers usually take a gap year to work or travel. With those plans looking unlikely, there may be an increase in school leavers wanting to study.

But despite the extra funding for 20,000 short courses, universities are unable to respond fully to any changes in demand. Caps introduced in 2017 still remain that effectively limit the number of places universities can offer.

Increasing capacity in the tertiary sector by removing the caps on university places would assist universities to deal with the coronavirus crisis.

Universities play an important role in our society, and they will bring future revenue into the economy when international student numbers eventually recover. Australia will need to make further decisions about how much we want to support our universities during this crisis.

– ref. Australian universities could lose $19 billion in the next 3 years. Our economy will suffer with them – https://theconversation.com/australian-universities-could-lose-19-billion-in-the-next-3-years-our-economy-will-suffer-with-them-136251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Hatfield-Dodds, Executive Director, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)

COVID-19 has taken Australia and the world by surprise. Coming after severe droughts in eastern Australia, concerns have been raised about Australian food security.

The concerns are understandable, but they are misplaced.

Despite temporary shortages of some food items in supermarkets caused by an unexpected surge in demand, Australia does not have a food security problem.

An Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences study released today outlines why Australia is one of the most food-secure countries in the world.

Supermarket shelves reflect a surge in demand

Uncertainties around the impacts of COVID-19 have triggered a rapid increase in purchasing by consumers seeking to stockpile a range of items, resulting in disruption to stocks of some basic food items.

This disruption is temporary and not an indication of food shortages.

Rather, it is a result of logistics taking time to adapt to an unexpected surge in purchasing.

We are highly food-secure

Food security refers to the physical availability of food, and to whether people have the resources and opportunity to get reliable economic access to it.

Australia ranks among the most food secure nations in the world, and is in the top 10 countries for food affordability and availability.

Australians are wealthy by global standards and can choose from diverse and high-quality foods from all over the world at affordable prices.

Most Australians can afford to purchase healthy food that meets their nutritional needs, and as a result, Australia has the world’s equal-lowest level of undernourishment.

We import only 11% of our food

Most food and beverages consumed in Australia are produced in Australia.

But not everything that Australians like to eat is produced here. So we import about 11% of the food and beverages we consume by value.

The imports are mainly processed products (including coffee beans, frozen vegetables, seafood products, and beverages), along with small amounts of out-of-season fresh food.

Imported products account for 11% of expenditure on food and beverages

It is possible that disruptions to food imports from COVID-19 (or something else) could result in temporary shortages of some products, restricting consumer choice in the same way as cyclones have restricted access to Australian bananas.

It would be unlikely to have a material impact on food security – in terms of ensuring a sufficient supply of healthy and nutritious food, even if higher prices for or limited availability of specific products disappoints or inconveniences some consumers.

Australia produces more food than it consumes

Australia typically exports about 70% of agricultural production.

The level of exports varies across sectors. Some of our largest industries, such as beef and wheat, are heavily export-focused. Others, like horticulture, pork and poultry, sell most of their products in Australia, with an emphasis on supplying fresh produce.

Most Australian agricultural production is export oriented

Australia’s large exports, even in severe drought years, act as a shock absorber for domestic supply.

They allow domestic consumption to remain stable while exports vary, absorbing the ups and downs associated with Australia’s variable climate and seasonal conditions.

Domestic food consumption is stable, while agricultural exports vary

The outlook for rain is good

After a hot and dry 2019 and widespread drought conditions in NSW and Queensland, above-average recent rains and positive forecasts provide the basis for the best start to Australia’s agricultural production season in years.

While current prospects for winter crops are good, more rain is required for these to be realised.

The Bureau is forecasting that grain production is likely to return to close to average levels, with a significant chance of higher production given the good start to the winter cropping season.

Wetter than average conditions are likely across agricultural areas from May to July 2020

For livestock producers, better seasonal conditions provide the opportunity to rebuild herds and flocks following a relatively long period of destocking.

Our access to food is secure

Australia is one of the most food-secure countries in the world, with ample supplies of safe, healthy food. The vast majority of it is produced here in Australia, and domestic production more than meets our needs, even in drought years.

While we import about 11% of our food and beverages, disruptions to these imports would not threaten the food security of most Australians.

The Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences is forecasting a return to close to average levels of grain production, with a significant chance of higher production, given the good start to the winter cropping season.

Read more: Helping farmers in distress doesn’t help them be the best: the drought relief dilemma

The analysis released today explores related issues in more depth, including the contribution of irrigated agriculture to Australian food security, levels of global grain stocks, and the contributions of international trade and Australian exports to food security in other countries.

Australia’s agricultural producers do rely on global supply chains and imported inputs. Shortages or disruptions to these inputs have not yet been significant or widespread, but could reduce productivity and profitability.

While action is already in train to address key issues, it will be important for business and government to continue actively monitoring and managing these risks.

– ref. Don’t panic: Australia has truly excellent food security – https://theconversation.com/dont-panic-australia-has-truly-excellent-food-security-136405

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

Last week the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) sent an extraordinary letter to Australia’s banks and insurers, essentially telling them to cut their dividend payments to shareholders in light of the coronavirus crisis.

It said it expected banks and insurers to “seriously consider deferring decisions on the appropriate level of dividends”.

Where a board was confident that it could approve a dividend on the basis of robust stress testing that had been discussed with APRA, it should “nevertheless be at a materially reduced level”.

Where dividends were paid those payments should be “offset to the extent possible through the use of dividend reinvestment plans and other capital management initiatives”.

With Australia’s big four banks potentially suffering big losses due to mortgage defaults among other things, their capital bases are at risk.

Equity research analysts at Macquarie outline a scenario under which bank losses

reach A$25-27 billion per bank, and their capacity to pay dividends (without raising equity) materially diminishes

Why did APRA do it?

The letter isn’t a “ban” on dividends, and APRA wasn’t telling the banks anything they don’t already know. So why did it bother?

The answer lies in the economics of how investors react to firms that don’t pay the dividends expected.

Seen through that lens, APRA was very clever indeed.

In a classic 1985 paper Merton Miller and Kevin Rock provided a theoretical answer to the puzzle of why paying dividends seems to signal good news to investors, and why cutting dividends seems to signal bad news, and cuts the share price.

In the Miller-Rock model, the managers of a firm have better information about its future prospects than outside investors.

To keep it simple, imagine there are two “types” of firms: good and bad.

Good firms have high future cashflows, bad ones have low ones.

Only the managers know which is which.

Read more: The last thing companies should be doing right now is paying dividends

Because both types of firm can earn something from investing in the business, it is in the interest of both (more so the good firm) to invest rather than pay out dividends.

Miller and Rock wondered whether what each type of firm did provided clues to investors about whether the managers thought it was good or bad.

Surprisingly, they found that usually good firms will pay high dividend and bad firms no dividends.

It is surprising because good firms are sacrificing more by paying dividends.

Read more: Australia’s appetite for dividends could cannibalise economic growth

Their logic was that the bad firms were the least able to afford good dividends and that good firms knew this and paid high dividends to signal they could afford to.

It has a striking implication with strong empirical support.

If a firm gets a temporary negative shock to its cashflow or investment prospects it won’t want to cut its dividend lest investors think it has turned “bad”.

It will borrow or even do short-term damage to its prospects in order to maintain investor confidence and hence a high stock price.

Get out of jail free

Notice that the signalling theory of dividends implies that the managers of firms would like to cut dividends in tough financial times, and probably should, but they worry about sending a bad signal to investors.

An announcement like APRA’s provides them with cover – an excuse.

And it does more. It is what economists refer to as a “coordination device”.

If the big four banks got together and agreed cut their dividends by the same amount, say in half (which would be illegal) investors would get no differential signal and no new information about which bank was “good” and which was “bad”.

APRA’s message opens up the possibility of all four coordinating without talking – merely by following advice.

As 2005 Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling put it in his book, The Strategy of Conflict,

people can often concert their intentions or expectations with others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same

And they’ve an interest in coordinating. If one bank falls over during this crisis and needs to be bailed out that’s bad for all of them. All of their stock prices will tank, it will be hard for them to raise the capital they need to fund their operations.

Australia’s banks compete, but they are “frenemies”, right now more friends than enemies.

Read more: Why bank shares are climbing despite the royal commission

We will have to wait and see if they pick up the get-out-of-jail card APRA has handed them and cut dividends together.

APRA could have taken a tougher stance. It could have banned dividends. But that would have sent a bad signal to domestic and international capital markets about the solvency of our banks.

I have been critical of some of APRA’s moves in recent years. But this one is brilliant. Let’s hope the banks can see a life raft when they’re offered one.

– ref. Vital Signs: APRA’s extraordinary gift to banks under pressure to pay dividends – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-apras-extraordinary-gift-to-banks-under-pressure-to-pay-dividends-136407

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

While Scott Morrison and most other politicians are trying to be their best selves during the coronavirus crisis, Malcolm Turnbull’s book is crashing in, chocker with reminders of how the Liberals behaved during their coups.

The book’s not out until Monday but details emerged on Thursday, including Turnbull’s juicy claim Morrison had “needed to be managed carefully and always counselled intensely about the need for confidentiality. … As Mathias [Cormann] said, ‘We have a Treasurer problem’ and the problem was one of trust.”

The book will entrench old enmities, and provide some character insights. But it won’t leave scratches on Morrison, so far has politics, and the community, moved on.

This week showed Australia continuing to make strong progress in containing COVID-19 – although the government refuses to embrace an “elimination” strategy, which the Prime Minister believes would be too costly to livelihoods.

Morrison’s attention is on the road out of the crisis – that is, unwinding the irksome but necessary restrictions we’re living under. In this he has a keen eye to the economic imperative.

This exit won’t be quick, although probably sooner than thought only a couple of weeks ago. It’s suggested we’re looking at a month before there’ll be a serious review.

As a precursor, we need greater testing and tracing capabilities (the latter with the help of a controversial new app that raises privacy issues) and enhanced ability to deal with local hotspot outbreaks.

Read more: View from The Hill: So you wanted to spend more time with the kids?

Morrison is sensitive to the restrictions trying people’s patience; equally, it would be folly to risk a second wave of infection by acting too early.

Morrison’s own patience was tried this week by that new and much-praised political creature, the national cabinet. He desperately wants more children back at school, not least as an economic lever, enabling more parents to return to work. In media appearances before Thursday’s meeting, he ran his arguments forcefully, and made a special video appealing to teachers.

But the states and territories are still going their various ways – while accommodating children who need to be on site – and there won’t be the large-scale quick return the PM would prefer.

Morrison hid his disappointment. The states had the responsibility for the (government) schools, he pointed out. What should parents do? Listen to their premiers, he said, avoiding clenched teeth.

One flag on the exit road is a proposed parliamentary week in May, way ahead of the scheduled August date. This will be a normal sitting, unlike the single-day sessions devoted to passing relief packages.

Beyond easing the first lot of restrictions, though, will be other rounds in the “exit” debate, and how they run will be important for the next election, due early 2022.

While the higher welfare payments expire later this year, and free child care also has a time limit, it is hard to see the pre-COVID-19 status quo restored in these areas without injustices and enormous political fights.

Then there’s the longer-term question: how and when does the country pay for the huge government spending – more than $200 billion allocated so far – needed to get through this disaster?

This debate will be about economics and politics, and it will put up in lights the issue of inter-generational fairness.

In its impact, COVID-19 targets the elderly; most (though not all) younger people have a mild illness.

This fact has affected the debate about how the pandemic has been handled – some argue the health of the old shouldn’t have received priority over the health of the economy. The age differential will also influence the discussion about the legacy debt Australia faces (on the upside, at a time when money has never been so cheap to borrow).

Bob Breunig, head of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Australian National University, points to multiple reasons why the young bear a heavy economic burden in this crisis.

Many are in casual jobs, and in sectors worst harmed, such as hospitality. Also, people beginning their careers during a downturn take longer to “catch up” financially with those who commenced in good times. And younger people will be the taxpayers of the future as the country deals with the debt.

Breunig advocates a sweeping agenda of tax reform, the bottom line of which would harmonise taxes on assets (and include the family home), and switch the tax mix towards indirect taxes, notably with a rise in the GST and the introduction of a broad-based land tax.

Read more: Eradicating the COVID-19 coronavirus is also the best economic strategy

The present system “taxes active people heavily, it doesn’t tax inactive people so heavily,” he says. The former are younger; the latter older. He argues his changes would provide economic stimulus, as well as being fairer to the young.

Breunig admits when it comes to tax “I’m a dreamer”, and won’t be expecting decision-makers to warm to his radical agenda (although there is interest in tax reform by some states).

Intergenerational fairness does play to the argument that an early start should be made to paying off the debt.

It can be put in terms of a social bargain. The lives of the present older generation are being protected – as they should be. The quid pro quo should be that that generation makes its contribution to dealing with the resulting debt.

But of course there would be vigorous push back to that proposition from some of those who’d be paying, and they have electoral clout.

The government is looking to growth as an elixer. Morrison said on Thursday: “On the other side of this virus and leading on the way out we are going to have to have economic policy measures that are going to have to be very pro-growth, that is going to enable businesses to employ people, that is going to enable businesses to invest and businesses to move forward”.

Easier said that done. Wasn’t the government committed to “pro-growth” policies before the crisis? Didn’t Morrison go to the last election promising growth? Yet growth, pre-virus, was disappointingly low.

Politically, the government will be in risky territory as it moves towards the next election, hemming in its capacity for tough policy choices.

In the bowels of the Liberal party they’re likely already speculating on how the government will be placed for a 2022 campaign.

Assuming Morrison continues to navigate COVID-19 skilfully, will he face a grateful electorate? Not if Labor’s experience after the global financial crisis is any guide.

The economy will be still struggling to get back on its feet. A lot of people, and notably young people, will be battling in an extremely difficult job market. Many will have had their education disrupted. There will be complaints about benefits that have been withdrawn or reduced.

Morrison says the budget, to be delivered in October, will have a plan to deal with debt and deficit. The big question will be, how far they’ll be kicked down the road.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Intergenerational fairness puts COVID-19 obligation on older people – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-intergenerational-fairness-puts-covid-19-obligation-on-older-people-136552

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

The government has announced up to $165 million to enable Qantas and Virgin Australia to service crucial metropolitan and regional routes over the next two months, with a review after that on whether more support is needed.

The network includes all state and territory capitals and large regional centres such as Albury, Alice Springs, Coffs Harbour, Dubbo, Kalgoorlie, Mildura, Port Lincoln, Rockhampton, Tamworth, Townsville and Wagga Wagga.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, who is Transport Minister, said sustaining aviation “is critical to protecting livelihoods and saving lives”.

He said the latest assistance was in addition to more than $1 billion the government had already given in support to the industry.

“As Australians are asked to stay home unless absolutely necessary, we are ensuring secure and affordable access for passengers who need to travel, including our essential workers such as frontline medical personnel and defence personnel, as well as supporting the movement of essential freight such as critical medicine and personal protective equipment,” McCormack said.

“This investment will also help Australians returning from overseas, who find themselves in a different city after 14 days of mandatory quarantine, complete their journey home safely.”

The underwriting will ensure that where flights operate at a loss, the airline is not out of pocket.

Flights will incorporate social distancing, to which both airlines are committed.

An embattled Virgin has been appealing for a bail out or the government to take an equity stake. But the government’s position has been it will not step in for a single airline.

Asked on Thursday whether it would bail out Virgin, Scott Morrison said “we as a government appreciate the value of two competitive, viable airlines in the Australian economy …

“Any responses that the Commonwealth government is going to have will be done on a sector wide basis.

“I’m aware that there are many market-based options that are currently being pursued, and I would wish those discussions every success.”

– ref. Government funding to Qantas and Virgin to ensure air services on key routes – https://theconversation.com/government-funding-to-qantas-and-virgin-to-ensure-air-services-on-key-routes-136554

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Serra Ivynian, Research Fellow, Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney, University of Technology Sydney

As we continue to navigate the coronavirus pandemic, many hospitals and health services are actually less busy than usual.

Fewer patients are presenting to emergency departments and primary care services in Australia and around the world.

They might be choosing to stay away for fear of catching coronavirus, or because they don’t want to put pressure on the health system at this time, or both.

But particularly if you’re someone with a chronic health condition, it’s essential you continue to seek medical care routinely, and especially in an emergency.

Delaying or avoiding necessary medical care could lead to preventable deaths.

Read more: How we’ll avoid Australia’s hospitals being crippled by coronavirus

Anxiety and fear

Delaying or avoiding medical care despite health problems is not a new concept. People often downplay the severity of their symptoms, believe they will resolve on their own or perceive they can manage themselves at home.

This reasoning is now compounded by fear of becoming infected with COVID-19 as well as overburdening the health-care system.

Some people living with chronic conditions such as heart failure, lung or kidney disease may be more concerned about contracting COVID-19. This is justified. People with chronic conditions tend to get sicker than the overall population if they catch coronavirus, and are more likely to die.

Concerns about overburdening the health-care system, which people already perceive to be stretched, has been a common reason for delayed care-seeking, even before the current pandemic.

But constant reports of overflowing hospitals and scarce resources during the coronavirus crisis may serve to validate this concern for people who are considering whether or not to seek medical care.

Read more: Why are older people more at risk of coronavirus?

While it’s too early to have definitive statistics, Australian estimates suggest attendance at hospitals and general practices could be down by as much as 50%.

Why it’s important to continue to seek care

People with chronic health conditions may need to seek medical care for a range of reasons. This could be routine care for a chronic disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, diabetes, cancer, bowel or heart disease.

They may need to seek unscheduled care if their condition flares up. For example, for a person with chronic heart failure, it would be important for them to seek timely health care if they were experiencing symptoms such as breathlessness, fatigue, or peripheral oedema (the accumulation of fluid causing swelling, usually in the lower limbs).

Read more: How to recognise a stroke and what you should know about their treatment

Importantly, if people delay seeking care for chronic illnesses, we may see an increase in preventable deaths.

For example, for people with heart disease, untreated symptoms could lead to long-term heart damage, need for intensive care, and death.

It’s also possible if a large number of people avoid seeking treatment now, hospitals will find themselves overwhelmed when the pandemic is over.

You can go out for medical care

While the global public health messaging urges people to stay home to save lives, it’s important to understand one of the key exemptions is medical treatment. And this doesn’t apply only to people with COVID-19 symptoms.

Regular GP or specialist appointments

People with chronic conditions may already be receiving advice from their health professionals about how regular appointments will be conducted.

To minimise risks to staff and patients, many health services are offering telehealth appointments (via phone or video conference). It’s best to contact your GP or specialist by phone prior to your appointment to see whether this service is available and appropriate.

Read more: What can you use a telehealth consult for and when should you physically visit your GP?

There will be times when a telephone or video-conference is not suitable, such as when your doctor needs to perform a physical examination, administer therapies including medications, or you need tests such as blood tests or x-rays.

If you do need to attend a clinic or hospital in person, you should be assured they’re taking additional precautions to prevent the spread of infection during this time.

If symptoms flare up or in an emergency

If your symptoms get worse, you should still contact your GP or specialist if this is your normal course. This is important even if you don’t think your symptoms are urgent.

And it remains critical that in life-threatening circumstances – like if you believe you’re having a heart attack or stroke – you seek medical attention immediately by calling triple zero (000).

These are medical emergencies and our hospitals are well-equipped to respond, even during COVID-19.

Some practical tips

The Heart Foundation offer the following advice for people living with chronic conditions during COVID-19:

• keep looking after your health and stay connected with your doctor

• get your annual flu vaccination

• practise physical distancing and good hand hygiene

• stay active and eat a healthy diet.

And most importantly: don’t ignore a medical emergency.

Read more: For older people and those with chronic health conditions, staying active at home is extra important – here’s how

– ref. Even in a pandemic, continue with routine health care and don’t ignore a medical emergency – https://theconversation.com/even-in-a-pandemic-continue-with-routine-health-care-and-dont-ignore-a-medical-emergency-136246

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maja Husaric, Lecturer, Victoria University

For centuries, doctors and care givers have listened to the different types of cough in search of clues to help diagnose underlying disease.

Coughs are a valuable diagnostic tool, but how do you know if you’ve got a relatively harmless cough, a coronavirus cough – or something else altogether?

An occasional cough is healthy, but one that persists for weeks, produces bloody mucus, causes changes in phlegm colour or comes with fever, dizziness or fatigue may be a sign you need to see a doctor.

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

Cough questions

If you’ve gone to see a doctor about a cough, he or she will want to know about:

• how long has the cough lasted? Days, weeks, months?
• when is the cough most intense? Night, morning, intermittently throughout the day?
• how does the cough sound? Dry, wet, barking, hacking, loud, soft?
• does the cough produce symptoms such as vomiting, dizziness, sleeplessness or something else?
• how bad is your cough? Does it interfere with daily activities, is it debilitating, annoying, persistent, intermittent?

COVID-19 cough: dry, persistent and leaves you short of breath

The most prominent symptoms of COVID-19 are fever and fatigue, and you may feel like you have a cold or flu. Cough is present in about half of infected patients.

Considering that COVID-19 irritates lung tissue, the cough is dry and persistent. It is accompanied with shortness of breath and muscle pain.

As disease progresses, the lung tissue is filled with fluid and you may feel even more short of breath as your body struggles to get enough oxygen.

Wet and phlegmy or dry and hacking?

A wet cough brings up phlegm from the lower respiratory tract (the lungs and lower airways, as opposed to your nose and throat) into the mouth. The “wet” sound is caused by the fluid in the airways and can be accompanied with a wheezing sound when breathing in. The lower airways have more secretory glands than your throat, which is why lower respiratory tract infections cause a wet cough.

A dry cough doesn’t produce phlegm. It usually starts at the back of the throat and produces a barking or coarse sound. A dry cough does not clear your airways so sufferers often describe it as an unsatisfactory cough.

Nose and throat infections cause irritation to those areas and produce a hacking dry cough with sore throat. These types of cough are often seen in flu or cold.

Sometimes a cough can start off dry but eventually turn wet.

For example, the lung infection pneumonia often begins with a dry cough that’s sometimes painful and can cause progressive shortness of breath. As infection progresses, the lung air sacs (alveoli) can fill up with inflammatory secretions such as lung tissue fluid and blood, and then the cough will become wet. At this stage, sputum becomes frothy and blood-tinged.

What about whooping cough?

Whooping cough is caused by bacterial infection that affects cells in the airways and causes irritation and secretion.

Symptoms include coughing fits that end in a loud, “breathing in” noise that often sounds like a long “whoop” and leaves you gasping for air. Mucus is often expelled.

Read more: Does JK Rowling’s breathing technique cure the coronavirus? No, it could help spread it

Prolonged, forceful coughing can damage your airways, or cause rib fractures or muscle tears – so it’s important to know when medical help is required.

So whatever your cough sounds like, keep an eye on it and see a doctor (either in person or via a telehealth appointment) if it doesn’t go away or gets worse.

– ref. Dry, wet, barking, hacking: a guide to coughs in the time of coronavirus – https://theconversation.com/dry-wet-barking-hacking-a-guide-to-coughs-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-136048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Troy Baisden, Professor and Chair in Lake and Freshwater Sciences, University of Waikato

The latest environmental report on New Zealand’s lakes and rivers reiterates bleak news about the state of freshwater ecosystems, and warns that climate change will exacerbate existing threats.

Almost all New Zealand rivers running through urban and farming areas (95-99%) carry pollution above water quality guidelines, while most of the nation’s wetlands (90%) have been drained, and many freshwater fish species (76%) are threatened or at risk.

The most significant pressures on freshwater ecosystems fit into four issues:

Climate change gets more attention than in earlier assessments, reflecting the fact that glaciers are already shrinking and soils are drying out.

Read more: New Zealand’s urban freshwater is improving, but a major report reveals huge gaps in our knowledge

What whitebait tell us about freshwater fish under stress

The latest assessment is an update on a freshwater report in 2017 and the comprehensive Environment Aotearoa 2019. It reiterates issues we’ve seen before, but begins to implement recent recommendations by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) calling for a stronger link between data and environmental management.

Biological impacts are at the forefront of this latest assessment. It shows that a wide range of freshwater organisms are at risk. The statistics for freshwater fish are the most concerning, with three quarters of the 51 native species already either threatened or at risk of extinction.

The report uses a particular group of native fish (īnanga, or galaxids) to connect the multiple impacts humans have, across a range of habitats at different life stages.

Īnanga are better known as whitebait, a delicacy that is a mix of juveniles from six different species caught as they migrate from the sea to rivers.

Īnanga of different ages and species live in different habitats, so they can be used to represent the issues facing a range of freshwater fish across ecosystems. The main stress factors include altered habitat, pollution and excess nutrients, water use for irrigation and climate change.

Climate change is expected to exacerbate existing stresses native organisms like īnanga face and protecting their habitat means understanding how much it will reduce water flows and create hotter and drier conditions.

Filling gaps in understanding

The use of organisms to assess environmental change, including climate change impacts, is an obvious but important step. It makes it possible to consider climate change in a way that meets the Environmental Reporting Act’s requirement to report on a “body of evidence”.

This latest report responds to the PCE’s concerns about gaps in our knowledge, which were raised in the Environment Aotearoa 2019 assessment. The new strategy for filling large holes in our knowledge has three priorities: knowing and monitoring what we have, what we may lose, and where or how we can make changes.

Read more: Six ways to improve water quality in New Zealand’s lakes and rivers

The report highlights that mātauranga Māori, the process of using indigenous knowledge about the environment, can fill some gaps in data or add insights. Other methods and models, such as nutrient budget scenarios, also deserve consideration.

There is some good news as well. Some pollution concerns may be minor or limited to very small areas. This includes several so-called emerging contaminants, such as fire retardants, which have been discovered in groundwater around airfields but are now banned or restricted.

The second piece of good news is that new ways of studying the environment can help fill major gaps. For example, lakes may be more stable indicators of freshwater health than rivers and streams, but only 4% (about 150) of New Zealand’s 3,820 larger lakes are regularly monitored by regional councils.

For almost 300 lakes, the report includes an index of the plants that live in them, and for more than 3000 there is now an established method of estimating lake water quality. Further information is becoming available, using updated estimations, satellite data for the last 20 years and sediment cores to reconstruct environmental conditions over the last few hundred years.

Unfortunately, the data from lakes confirms the general trend of freshwater decline, but at least the multiple forms of complementary information should help us to manage New Zealand’s freshwater ecosystems better.

– ref. Polluted, drained, and drying out: new warnings on New Zealand’s rivers and lakes – https://theconversation.com/polluted-drained-and-drying-out-new-warnings-on-new-zealands-rivers-and-lakes-136486

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Cook, Lecturer, Computer and Security Science,Edith Cowan University, Edith Cowan University

Whether you use Zoom, Skype or Microsoft Teams, the webcam on your home PC or laptop device has probably never been as active as it is during this pandemic.

Most of us have a camera built into our phone, tablet, laptop, or a desktop webcam we use for work, study or virtual socialising.

Unfortunately, this privilege can leave us vulnerable to an online attack known as camfecting. This is when hackers take control of your webcam remotely. They do this by disabling the “on” light which usually indicates the camera is active – so victims are none the wiser.

Read more: ‘Click for urgent coronavirus update’: how working from home may be exposing us to cybercrime

Many of our device cameras remain unsecured. In fact, research has suggested globally there are more than 15,000 web camera devices (including in homes and businesses) readily accessible to hackers, without even needing to be hacked.

Take a tip from Mark Zuckerberg

When your laptop is turned off its webcam can’t be activated. However, many of us keep our laptops in hibernation or sleep mode (which are different). In this case, the device can be woken by a cybercriminal, and the camera turned on. Even Mark Zuckerberg has admitted he covers his webcam and masks his microphone.

The number of recorded instances of image captured through unauthorised webcam access is relatively low. This is because most attacks happen without the user ever realising they’ve been compromised. Thus, these attacks go unaccounted for.

It’s important to consider why someone would choose to hack into your home device. It’s unlikely an attacker will capture images of you for personal blackmail, or their own creepy exploits. While these instances do eventuate, the majority of illicit webcam access is related to gathering information for financial gain.

Say cheese!

Cybercriminals frequently attempt tricking people into believing they’ve been caught by a webcam hack. Everyday there are thousands of spam emails sent in a bid to convince users they’ve been “caught” on camera. But why?

Shaming people for “inappropriate” webcam use in this way is a scam, one which generates considerable ransom success. Many victims pay up in fear of being publicly exposed.

Read more: Webcamming: the sex work revolution that no one is willing to talk about

Most genuine webcam hacks are targeted attacks to gather restricted information. They often involve tech-savvy corporate groups carrying out intelligence gathering and covert image capturing. Some hacks are acts of corporate espionage, while others are the business of government intelligence agencies.

There are two common acquisition techniques used in camfecting attacks. The first is known as an RAT (Remote Administration Tool) and the second takes place through false “remote tech support” offered by malicious people.

Genuine remote tech support usually comes from your retail service provider (such as Telstra or Optus). We trust our authorised tech support people, but you shouldn’t extend that trust to a “friend” you hardly know offering to use their own remote support software to “help you” with a problem.

An example of an RAT is a Trojan virus delivered through email. This gives hackers internal control of a device.

Total access

When a Trojan virus infects a device, it’s not just the webcam that is remotely accessed, it’s the whole computer. This means access to files, photos, banking and a range of data.

The ability to install a RAT has been around for several years. In 2015, a popular RAT could be purchased on the internet for just US $40. The malware (harmful software) can be deployed via an email, attachment, or flash drive.

Those wanting to learn how to use such tools need look no further than YouTube, which has many tutorials. It has never been easier for hackers.

Webcams are everywhere

Our homes are getting “smarter” each year. In 2018, the average Australian household reportedly had 17 connected devices.

Let’s say there’s one or two laptops, three or four mobile phones and tablets, a home security camera system and a smart TV with a built-in camera for facial recognition.

Add a remote video doorbell, a talking doll named My Friend Cayla, the drone helicopter you got for Christmas, and the robot toy that follows you around the house – and it’s possible your household has more than 20 IP accessible cameras.

To better understand your vulnerabilities you can try a product like Shodan. This search engine allows you to identify which of your devices can be seen by others through an internet connection.

Practise ‘cyberhygiene’ at home

Placing a piece of black tape over a camera is one simple low-tech solution for webcam hacking. Turning your laptop or desktop computer off when not in use is also a good idea. Don’t let a device’s hibernation, sleep or low power mode lure you into a false sense of safety.

At work you may have firewalls, antivirus, and intrusion detection systems provided by your company. Such protections are void for most of us when working from home. “Cyberhygiene” practices will help secure you from potential attacks.

Always use secure passwords, and avoid recycling old ones with added numbers such as “Richmond2019”, or “Manutd2020”. Also, make sure your antivirus and operating system software is regularly updated.

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

Most of all, use common sense. Don’t share your password (including your home wifi password), don’t click suspicious links, and routinely clear your devices of unnecessary apps.

When it comes to using webcams, you may wonder if you’re ever completely safe. This is hard to know – but rest assured there are steps you can take to give yourself a better chance.

– ref. Hackers can access your mobile and laptop cameras and record you – cover them up now – https://theconversation.com/hackers-can-access-your-mobile-and-laptop-cameras-and-record-you-cover-them-up-now-135933

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bryan Rodgers, Honorary Professor, School of Demography, Australian National University

Since March 29, we have congratulated ourselves for flattening the curve of the COVID-19 epidemic in Australia.

But if we ask more detailed questions, such as “which curves have flattened?”, “by how much?”, and “how was it done?”, the answers are not immediately obvious.

Data for addressing these questions are poor, and by identifying their limitations we can improve them and provide better tools for future decision making.

Read more: How to flatten the curve of coronavirus, a mathematician explains

Which curves have flattened?

The typical curve we are talking about is one that shows the number of new COVID-19 cases per day across the country. Flattening it means fewer new cases each day, so the number of current cases comes down, reducing demand on services.

We can debate exactly how flat we would like this curve, but everyone broadly agrees flattening is the way to go.

Australia’s curve is built from daily reports from each state and territory. New cases are logged to the date of the report, not the date of the test result or when the swab was taken, nor when symptoms appeared, and it certainly isn’t the date of infection.

It can be up to two weeks from infection to a case appearing in our curve, and this time lag is very important when considering if policies and community actions have desired effects.

Local versus imported cases

New Zealand data show the importance of separating out infections which happened overseas from “local” transmission. Its total curve shows a handful of cases per day in mid-March then rises steeply to a peak of over 70 cases per day in late March. By Easter Sunday, transmission had fallen 86% from the peak.

In the graph above, the medium blue line represents people who arrived recently in the country and most likely were infected overseas. The light blue line shows people who had not been out of the country, so they were infected in New Zealand. You can see the overseas infections peak six days before the high point for local transmission.

Border controls were tightened on March 19, which led to the drop in overseas transmissions. The later drop in the local transmission curve is due to two main things. Tighter quarantine of arrivals from overseas reduced the spread to the broader population, and the community lockdown following the declaration of a state of emergency on March 25 further reduced local transmission.

Different states treat data in different ways

It’s harder to see the big picture of what’s happening in Australia, because different states and territories report their figures in different ways. One way to approximate a national curve is to combine figures from New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT, which is about 70% of the country’s cases.

The Australian curves look similar to New Zealand’s but the drop in local cases is not as steep, falling to about half the peak by April 8.

How was this done? As in New Zealand, border control measures reduced the number of infected people coming into the country.

The “early signs of flattening the curve” at the end of March were largely due to the drop in cases from overseas, which had already fallen 25%. The peak and fall in local transmissions was due to quarantine of overseas arrivals, isolation of confirmed cases, social distancing and hygiene measures. These occurred later because of the two-week lag from action to effect.

Have Australia’s curves fallen further since the end of this chart, as New Zealand’s have done?

Local transmission data are vital

The Australian epidemic moved into a different phase at the start of April when local transmission overtook daily cases from overseas. Good data on local transmission are now more important than ever.

Their use could chart progress against targets and potentially compare infection rates across jurisdictions. This potential seems unlikely to be realised.

The ABC, the Guardian and covid19data.com.au have painstakingly collated state and territory information from a variety of formats. However, they cannot rectify inconsistencies in reporting across jurisdictions or the categories used to describe cases, which can prevent comparisons.

Inconsistencies cloud the picture

These inconsistencies and changes mean we cannot say with confidence how much Australia’s important local transmission curve has continued to move in the right direction since April 10.

For example, over the Easter weekend New South Wales reclassified between 71 and 76 previously reported cases from local transmission to a new combined grouping of overseas/interstate transmission. More changes to New South Wales categorisations were made over the following three days.

A best estimate of local transmission across the four jurisdictions is about 30 cases per day. Tasmania alone has reported over ten cases per day on average in recent days following the outbreak in the northwest of the state.

Although Australia’s border controls, rigorous testing and contact tracing, social distancing and hygiene have mitigated what would otherwise have become a national catastrophe, we can still improve our ability to track what’s going on.

Better records can help steer our future response

One way to resolve these inconsistencies would be to adopt a national unit record system like New Zealand’s. This would mean each record represents one case and includes information about date of report and possible source of infection. The record can be altered to reflect new information without affecting the total number or apparent timing of cases.

The two-week lag from infection to reporting presents challenges. Fencing off part of Tasmania where a lot of new infections have been reported is encircling a spot that was hot 10–14 days ago. More broadly, we are guiding our “scalable proportional response” using a chart that is necessarily out of date.

Our response is more like steering a container ship that takes two weeks to respond to the controls than tacking in a dinghy to meet the tide and the wind of the moment. So far, we have struggled to record where we have been and cannot pinpoint our present position or direction.

– ref. How much has Australia really flattened the curve of coronavirus? Until we keep better records, we don’t know – https://theconversation.com/how-much-has-australia-really-flattened-the-curve-of-coronavirus-until-we-keep-better-records-we-dont-know-136252

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced details of the next stage of lockdown, but New Zealanders won’t know until Monday when the country moves out of strict level 4 conditions.

Once in level 3, people will have to remain within their household bubble, but can expand it to include close family or caregivers. Workers will have to continue working from home if they can, and only businesses that operate within social distancing measures will be allowed to reopen.

Ardern has described level 3 as a “waiting room”, with significant restrictions remaining in place.

We have to wait and see if what we have done has worked. After a while, if we don’t show further signs of illness, we can go back to life that is a bit more normal. If we deteriorate, then it’s back to lockdown at level 4.

Regardless of when the current lockdown rules change, New Zealand’s government and authorities will retain exceptional powers over people’s lives until the country is no longer in a state of emergency. These powers – from telling people to stay home to potentially making vaccinations or testing mandatory – can infringe on several rights and liberties.

The intrusions has been relatively limited so far, but since emergency powers could continue beyond the level 4 lockdown, it’s worth knowing how that affects your rights now.

Read more: As NZ goes into lockdown, authorities have new powers to make sure people obey the rules

Freedoms of assembly and movement

New Zealand’s state of emergency was extended on Tuesday this week for a further seven days. Beyond the level 4 lockdown, which will continue at least until next Thursday, the state of emergency can either continue nationwide (in seven-day blocks) or be broken into local emergencies if a national level is no longer justified.

The notice given under the Epidemic Preparedness Act, the lynchpin to much of the extraordinary powers the government currently has, has a tenure of three months. It too can be renewed.

The loss of the right to assembly and freedom of movement is what citizens are most concerned about.

The authorities’ ability to impose these restrictions to enable quarantines and to prevent the spread of infectious diseases dates back to laws introduced in 1842. The modern equivalents of these powers are found in the Health Act and the Civil Defence and Emergency Management Act – with the latter allowing orders to stop any activity that may contribute to an emergency.

Providing these restrictions remain both precautionary and in proportion to the risk, it is unlikely they will be challenged seriously. But they cannot become indefinite, nor imposed without justification.

Read more: The psychology of lockdown suggests sticking to rules gets harder the longer it continues

Freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial

The next liberty at risk during times of emergency is the freedom of speech and the associated freedom of the press. Unlike in many more authoritarian or populist countries, New Zealanders’ freedom of expression was not infringed in the emergency.

The government called out fake news but did not impose censorship in terms of what was reported or who could ask questions.

The right to justice is the oldest of all, dating back to the Magna Carta in 1215, which ensures that no citizen shall be denied, or delayed, justice.

The modern manifestation of this is the right to a fair trial. This is layered by the right to trial by jury, when the penalty for the offence includes imprisonment for two years or more.

The exception to this right, during a state of emergency, is that judges may modify the rules of court as they consider necessary in the interests of justice, and proceedings can be delayed. The judiciary used these rules in response to the pandemic challenge, dividing the work between priority matters (concern for the liberty or personal safety of the individual) and non-urgent matters, which were largely pushed to one side.

This sounds reasonable, but would be unacceptable if leaked information – suggesting prisoners are kept locked up past their release date because of the emergency – is confirmed.

Read more: New Zealand’s coronavirus elimination strategy has united a nation. Can that unity outlast lockdown?

Medical freedoms and the right to vote

The real challenge is that a safe move out of lockdown may require both mandatory medical testing and vaccination, once a vaccine becomes available. These powers are potentially in direct conflict with the right to refuse medical treatment, which is part of New Zealand’s Bill of Rights. This will be a very difficult debate.

The final freedom at risk in times of emergency is our right to vote. Unlike other countries where a state of emergency is used as an excuse to hold onto power, in New Zealand the elections remain pencilled in for September 19, and the electoral committee is drawing up contingency plans to make the process both safe and workable.

Read more: Trust in government is high in NZ, but will it last until the country’s elections later in the year?

An extension of New Zealand’s three-year parliamentary term is only possible if 75% of all MPs vote for it, and that is unlikely. This is especially so since there is no serious proposal for a war-time type of national unity government, in which power could be shared between the leading parties.

However, the government has not silenced its critics in parliament. It created the epidemic response committee, chaired by the leader of the opposition, to hold it to account on its COVID-19 response.

The fact that the government has given control, both in terms of leadership and balance of numbers, will be hard for decision makers, but very good for New Zealand democracy.

– ref. Five ways New Zealanders’ lives and liberties will be heavily controlled, even after lockdown eases – https://theconversation.com/five-ways-new-zealanders-lives-and-liberties-will-be-heavily-controlled-even-after-lockdown-eases-136237

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Crystal Abidin, Senior Research Fellow & ARC DECRA, Internet Studies, Curtin University, Curtin University

For many of us who are used to working regular hours in an office, home-based isolation and lockdown is a novel and even unnerving experience.

However, East Asian home vloggers (video bloggers) have been documenting their days of “hanging out at home as a lifestyle” and sharing the small joys of home.

I have been researching how social media influencers in East Asia are sharing knowledge with different audiences by observing a group of Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean YouTubers. Their accounts show they are particularly good at chronicling the ebb and flow of daily life. They have lessons to teach those of us grappling with being “stuck at home”.

Soothing routines

I came to discover this online community while away from home for research. Peeking into the houses and homemaking routines of strangers in far away places brought me vicarious comfort.

Home vlogging focuses on performances and feelings of domesticity, privileging a slow and drawn-out pacing of everyday chores and mundane routines that are reframed to be hypnotically soothing.

Home vlogs turn the mundane routines of everyday life into mini-occasions: drawing the curtains as the morning sunlight floods into a room, listening to the kettle boil to the sounds of bubbling effervescence, watching the laundry tumble through the round glass door of a washing machine. They prioritise highly aestheticised, calming, and mindful ways of spending quality time at home.

The videos follow the daily rhythms of chores and mundane practices, compartmentalised to foster a sense of achievement and to mark the passing of time.

Home maintenance is portrayed as a mindful and even enjoyable activity rather than a chore; hospitality is practised through sprucing up the home and preparing meals for family members; and the house is a locus for meaningful exchanges with other people, with objects, and within one’s self.

Many home vloggers are adults who don’t work a 9-to-5 office job, but those who do appear to maintain impeccable work-life balance. They include the likes of South Korean 슛뚜sueddu (a freelance illustrator and artist who works from home) and 해그린달 haegreendal (a stay-home mum who cares for her child and home exquisitely). Japanese 少ない物ですっきり暮らす lives in a traditional Japanese house and Mocha is a hobbyist baker who lives by the sea.

Lessons at home

Despite their diverse backgrounds, each of these home vloggers shares an ethos about privileging the home as their primary place of activity, as opposed to venturing into the “outside world”.

They draw from past experience and introspection about working life to share personal stories about mindfulness (say reducing environmental waste), wellness (homemaking as therapy), recovery (opting to freelance or take a break from work due to overwork culture), and recuperation (improving mental and physical health).

Crucially, these personal stories are still narrated through the vehicle of the home. As the scenes pan across different areas of a room or house, peacefully lingering or gently zooming into different corners to focus on household artefacts, thoroughly dusting an assortment of cutlery can become a lesson on the importance of diligence, whereas watching plants bloom and glisten in the sun can become a reminder that hope can be found even in the most difficult of situations.

East Asian home vlogs tend to pull away from the body as the focal point, departing from many Western YouTubers who favor talking head videos or hosting home tours. Instead, the narrative is driven by small light text that dots across the screen in captions, occasionally supplemented by light storytelling. Many home vlogs have become so popular that viewers from around the world contribute to subtitles.

Tacit labors

It takes great effort to romanticise the experience and construction of a home. For these East Asian home vloggers, the leisurely and light tonality of their videos obscures the reality of hard work, diverse skillsets, and middle-class consumption required to sustain a pipeline of high quality home vlogs, at times for well over a million subscribers.

These include conscientious housekeeping, periodic refurbishment of the home to keep viewers interested in fresh contents, and strategically embedding sponsorship into the narrative without disrupting the calm visual flow. They are exemplars of the “tacit labours” required by social media influencers, a collective practice of work that is understated and so thoroughly rehearsed that it appears as effortless and subconscious.

A place of safety

East Asian citizens were among the first to experience COVID-19 from late-December. As such they provide a hopeful glimpse of everyday living adjusted to accommodate a global pandemic. They show a calming pace to grow into new lifestyle changes, and a gentle reminder to make the best of our situations.

Their seamless integration of COVID-19 mentions into their vlogs feels soothing, focused on personal coping strategies rather than on health advisories or rumours that have sent some platforms into panic around misinformation and demonetisation.

In the time of COVID-19, where many of us are involuntarily pulled back into our households for extended periods and made to convert our most intimate spaces into workplaces, these home vloggers provide a form of optimistic solace, a hopeful message. For those of us who might like to pursue a new relationship with our houses, perhaps they can be an inspirational template for how to approach “hanging out at home as a lifestyle”.

– ref. Slow living and the art of home maintenance: East Asian vloggers celebrate the domestic space – https://theconversation.com/slow-living-and-the-art-of-home-maintenance-east-asian-vloggers-celebrate-the-domestic-space-135555

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Elshaug, HCF Research Foundation Professorial Fellow, Professor in Health Policy and Co-Director, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney

Part of Australia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic was a severe reduction in elective surgery, and so private hospitals have stood almost empty for a month now.

People who might otherwise have had a procedure are experiencing “watchful waiting”, where their condition is monitored to assess how it develops rather than having a surgical procedure.

The big question is whether all those procedures which didn’t happen were even necessary. There has now been a steady stream of work which suggests many procedures don’t provide any benefits to patients at all – so called low- or no-value care.

Read more: Dodgy treatment: it’s not us, it’s the other lot, say the experts. So who do we believe?

Bringing about change in health policy is usually difficult (or slow, at best) because it’s like turning a big ship around. But in the past six weeks that ship has made a sudden about-turn.

Australia’s elective procedure system after the pandemic should be different from before the pandemic. We should dramatically reduce the number of low- or no-value procedures.

What is low- or no-value health care?

Low- or no-value health care mean the intervention provides no or very little benefit to patients, or where the risk of harm exceeds the likely benefit.

Reducing such “care” will improve both health outcomes for patients and the efficiency of the health system.

Research in New South Wales public hospitals showed up to 9,000 low-value operations were performed in just one year, and these consumed almost 30,000 hospital bed days that could have been used for high-value care.

One example of low-value care is spinal fusion surgery for low back pain. This is a procedure on the small bones in the spine, essentially welding them together. The alternative is pain management, physiotherapy and exercise.

The NSW analysis revealed up to 31% of all spinal fusions were inappropriate. But even this figure is likely an underestimate.

Read more: Needless treatments: spinal fusion surgery for lower back pain is costly and there’s little evidence it’ll work

Other examples include:

• vertebroplasty for osteoporotic spinal fractures: surgery to fill a backbone (vertebrae) with cement

• knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis: inserting a tube to remove tissue

• laparoscopic uterine nerve ablation for chronic pelvic pain: surgery to destroy a ligament that contains nerve fibres

• removing healthy ovaries during a hysterectomy

• hyperbaric oxygen therapy (breathing pure oxygen in a pressurised room) for a range of conditions including osteomyelitis (inflammation of the bone), cancer, and non-diabetic wounds and ulcers.

Low-value care can harm patients because of the risks inherent in any procedure. If a patient having a low-value procedure gets even one complication, the time they spend in hospital doubles, on average.

For some patients, the hospital stay can be much longer. For example, a low-value knee arthroscopy with no complications consumes one bed day. If a complication occurs, that length of stay increases to 11 days, on average.

Read more: Needless procedures: knee arthroscopy is one of the most common but least effective surgeries

For most low-value procedures, the most common complication is infection.

The situation is even worse in private hospitals, where a much greater proportion of elective procedures are low value.

Prioritise treatments that work

Most state health departments and private insurers now know the size of the low-value care problem and which hospitals are providing that “care”.

Due to the COVID-19 response, the tap for these procedures has been turned down for some and off for others. This is a risk for some patients, but others will benefit from not having the surgery. We must grasp the opportunity to learn from this enforced break.

Read more: The coronavirus ban on elective surgeries might show us many people can avoid going under the knife

One of the challenges for policymakers in the past in controlling low-value care has been difficulty in ratcheting down supply by reducing or redirecting a hospital’s surgical capacity and staff.

In many ways, the COVID-19 response has done this for them. After the pandemic, we can reassess and reorient to high-value care.

This does not necessarily mean reducing capacity. Some people aren’t currently getting the care they need. When the tap comes back on, this unmet backlog of care must be performed.

But this needn’t detract from a focused effort to keep the low-value care from re-emerging. The last thing we need is for low-value care to take the place of high-value care that has been delayed because of the COVID-19 response.

So how do you do it?

Australia should take three immediate steps to ensure we don’t return to the bad old days of open slather.

First, states should start reporting the rates of low-value care, using established measures. This reporting should identify every relevant hospital – public and private – and it should be retrospective, showing rates for the past few years.

Read more: Australians are undergoing unnecessary surgery – here’s what we can do about it

Second, states should require all public hospitals to take steps to limit low-value care – and hospitals that don’t comply should be called to account.

States have the insights and data necessary to do this.

Hospital strategies might include requiring a second opinion from another specialist before a procedure identified as low-value care is scheduled for surgery, or a retrospective review of decisions to perform such surgery.

In the post-pandemic world, states should also consolidate elective surgery, so the number of centres performing elective procedures in metropolitan areas is reduced, with decision-making tools to highlight downsides of low-value care and the alternatives.

Third, private insurers know low-value care is provided in private hospitals, but currently have fewer levers at their disposal to reduce such care. The Commonwealth government should legislate to empower funds to address this issue. Given the Commonwealth government is providing financial support to the private hospitals during their downturn, perhaps a requirement should be that they work with the insurers and Medicare to police the re-emergence of low-value care.

It would be a dreadful shame to waste this unprecedented opportunity, and revert to the old status quo of low- and no-value care.

– ref. Hospitals have stopped unnecessary elective surgeries – and shouldn’t restart them after the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/hospitals-have-stopped-unnecessary-elective-surgeries-and-shouldnt-restart-them-after-the-pandemic-136259

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

Lockdowns work. That’s the evidence from many different countries now, including Australia. To be more precise, lockdowns reduce the effective reproductive rate of the virus to the point where it is below 1, meaning that, on average, each infected person passes on the disease to less than one other person.

As long as this is sustained, the number of new cases will keep declining, as we have now seen. Potentially, as has been claimed to be the case in China, the number of cases will approach zero.

It now seems clear that the best strategy is (near) eradication, pushing the number of infections down to (or near) zero, and preventing any resurgence.

As has just been suggested by Health Minister Greg Hunt, it’s time to think about relaxing controls.

But when can we start, and which controls should be relaxed?

It’s benefits versus costs

These are questions which will need collaboration between epidemiologists, economists and other social scientists.

The problem is essentially one of benefit cost analysis: which measures can be relaxed at least cost in terms of increased reproduction rates relative to the benefits that relaxation will generate.

The epidemiologists have the expertise to answer the first question (as well as it can be answered with very limited evidence). Economists and social scientists have the expertise to answer the second.

The ideal case would come if we could confirm the virus had been wiped out completely in Australia (or in a particular state).

Read more: Eradicating the COVID-19 coronavirus is also the best economic strategy

Then, provided all new arrivals were subject to strict quarantine, we could drop all the restrictions except those that made sense for other reasons (encouraging/requiring hand washing is an obvious example).

But that’s unlikely to happen soon.

In the absence of comprehensive testing, even if counted new cases fall to zero, it’s hard to be sure that there aren’t any uncounted cases. And it will be some time before new cases reach zero.

So, we need to consider which restrictions we should lift, subject to the constraint that the reproduction rate is still below one, meaning that any undetected outbreaks will ultimately fizzle out. The first step is to identify the restrictions that impose the greatest cost for the least benefit in terms of reducing reproduction.

Which restrictions can go first?

The worst risks of spreading the disease come when large numbers of unrelated people are together in close proximity for a long time. Cruise ships represent an extreme case, where nearly everyone can get infected. Sporting matches and mass meetings are less extreme but still dangerous examples.

But at least on the anecdotal and intuitive evidence we have available, the most burdensome social restrictions are those that prevent gatherings involving modest numbers of family and close friends. Such gatherings post a much smaller risk than those of larger groups with more dispersed social networks.

Not only are the numbers small, but if other contacts are limited, any initial infection may be confined to a relatively small group.

Read more: Can I visit my boyfriend or my parents? Go fishing or bushwalking? Coronavirus rules in Western Australia

Given the big benefits from relaxing these restrictions and the low cost in terms of disease reproduction, these seem like obvious candidates for early easing.

Turning to economic activity, the costs of restricting an activity involving personal contact depend critically on the availability of remote-delivery substitutes.

Most obviously, office work of all kinds can be done remotely. Costs associated with lower efficiency and more goofing off are offset by the reduction in commuting costs. It’s entirely possible that the benefit to workers who place a high weight on commuting costs outweighs the cost to bosses who find supervision more difficult (and colleagues who enjoy social contact at work).

Read more: Remote work amid the coronavirus pandemic: 3 solutions

Conversely, as has been pointed out with a good deal of derision, there is no way of doing a haircut from 1.5 metres away. That wasn’t a good reason for excluding them from the lockdown (haircuts can easily be deferred after all) but it makes them a good candidate for subsequent relaxation.

The other key issue is that of option value.

If a decision can be easily reversed, at relatively low cost, it has an “option value” relative to a decision that is effectively irreversible. That’s why it made sense to lock down early, rather than waiting to see if the virus spread.

School closures provide an example where option values are relevant. If we reopen the schools it will be costly to close them again.

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

So, before reopening schools, we need to make sure that all the necessary facilities for handwashing and other health measures are in place, and that there is enough testing to detect infections before they spread.

One final point. Apart from lockdowns, the one thing that has been shown to work well is testing. The more people we can test, the faster we learn about possible outbreaks and more closely restrictions can be matched to the threat level.

– ref. Unlocking Australia: What can benefit-cost analysis tell us? – https://theconversation.com/unlocking-australia-what-can-benefit-cost-analysis-tell-us-136233

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Ascher Barnstone, Professor, Course Director Undergraduate Studies, School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney

Two of the most pressing needs worldwide in the coronavirus pandemic are for more hospital beds and testing centres. No country in the world has enough hospital beds or intensive-care unit (ICU) beds for a pandemic. Even the best prepared, like Germany with 33.9 ICU beds per 100,000 citizens, does not have enough.

Most countries have locked down to buy time by flattening the infection curve so fewer patients will present to hospital at once. They hope to use the time to boost hospital capacity.

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

But the design challenge is significant. We need structures that can be quickly and easily assembled, are inexpensive and meet technical requirements. Architects have always worked on such challenges – the Living Shelter is one recent example.

Here in Australia a consortium is working to develop two designs, one for hospital intensive care units and one for COVID-19 testing centres, that can be used across the country and overseas. By using recycled shipping containers as the core structure, the price of the buildings will be less than a third of the cost of conventional designs.

In both building types, the container doubles as structure and packaging. This means the designs are self-contained and easy to distribute anywhere in the world. All the building parts, technical equipment, cabinets and other fit-out materials pack into the container.

Douglas Abdiel, the director of charitable foundation P&G Purpose, and architect Robert Barnstone are working together on the design and delivery of these hospital units and testing centres.

Barnstone specialises in disaster relief architecture. He has developed designs for emergency housing for the International Red Cross and rapid deployment schools for countries afflicted by disaster. This experience gave Barnstone invaluable insights into the economics and potential construction systems for the hospital units and testing centres.

Read more: Coronavirus will devastate Aboriginal communities if we don’t act now

What are the key requirements?

Any disaster relief architecture must consider several critical design aspects:

• buildings need to be as cheap as possible so limited funds can be stretched to help as many people as possible

• the structure should be lightweight and easy to assemble because professional builders might not be available for construction

• the structure needs to be weatherproof and insulated for variable climates

• medical functions require running water, electricity, air exchange to bring fresh air into the container, and air conditioning to control the temperature inside.

The mechanical services needed in a medical facility are highly specialised and expensive. This makes it particularly challenging to design. Ideally, the structure should be lasting, so money invested in relief efforts is not wasted.

Emergency structures should also be designed for easy packaging and shipping. Standard dimensions of shipping containers, freight costs and delivery logistics must be considered.

Read more: Coronavirus an ‘existential threat’ to Africa and her crowded slums

So how do the two building designs work?

The two proposals for intensive care units and testing facilities use modified shipping containers as the supporting structure. You can see the full designs and specifications here.

The hospital structure is simply a large shed that houses ICU bays. A nurses’ station is located in the centre.

The testing centre is a drive-by place to conduct COVID-19 tests and either process them when a fast test is available or store them for shipping to laboratories.

Used shipping containers are cheap and easy to find. They are made from a steel frame with corrugated steel panelling, which makes them very strong.

Both schemes use prefabricated panels for exterior and interior walls. Window units will be integrated into panels. These come in standard sizes that easily pop into place.

The two design approaches do have differences, however.

The hospital uses a full-length 12-metre container. The shipping container acts as the structural and spatial core of the hospital building.

When unpacked, the container sits in the middle of the hospital and supports long-span steel trusses and the roof. It houses office and storage space.

The prefabricated panels form both the outside walls and interior partitions. End walls are made of transparent glass to allow natural light into the interior.

Interior bays for patients are also prefabricated. These line the exterior walls, leaving space for hospital staff to circulate between the ICU bays and central container.

In contrast, the testing centre is a single-unit building made from a half-length six-metre container. A large overhanging canopy covers the roof and front deck to protect against sun and rain.

A water storage tank rests on the roof underneath the canopy. A generator sits on one side. There is a scrub sink and changing area outside, with a curtain that allows for privacy and a bin to dispose of protective equipment.

The container doors support storage cabinets for test kits on their inside wall. These doors can swing open so they are flush with the front facade. In this position, the cabinets face the front deck for easy access by nurses and doctors.

The interior has ample storage and office furniture.

Construction of the prototype test centre was due to begin on April 15. To date, the team has raised A$30,000 to support the effort but needs $20,000 more. At A$3,125 per square metre, compared with about A$10,000 per square metre for usual construction, these solutions are affordable and can be produced and delivered very quickly.

– ref. Hospital beds and coronavirus test centres are needed fast. Here’s an Australian-designed solution – https://theconversation.com/hospital-beds-and-coronavirus-test-centres-are-needed-fast-heres-an-australian-designed-solution-136041

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bethaney Turner, Associate Professor, Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra

Recent COVID-19 induced panic buying has raised concerns about food security for many Australians.

While there’s plenty of food available, many Australians have seen supermarkets stripped bare of essentials in recent weeks. For some it can be hard to find basic items like rice or canned foods.

This is especially true for many of our most vulnerable citizens, from the elderly to those in remote Indigenous communities. What’s more, rising job losses and higher food prices means many people will be out-priced, increasing the number of those experiencing food insecurity in coming months.

Read more: How a time of panic buying could yet bring us together

But scarcity and food system vulnerabilities are not new experiences. Wars, the great depression, the global financial crisis and natural disasters such as fires and floods have exposed the fallibilities of our food system.

In times of crisis and disaster “food preferences” are the first to go and “making do” – for those who can – becomes the name of the game.

And while right now there really is no reason to stock up on food supplies from supermarkets, the sight of empty shelves has led some Australians to look for alternative ways to feed themselves and their families. We can turn to past experiences to identify approaches, skills and resources.

In fact, doing so can help us prepare to respond to future instability in food access expected to be brought about through the impacts of climate change. Looking to the past can help build the knowledge and skills necessary to strengthen future household and community resilience.

Changing diets

Having enough food available doesn’t mean everyone will have equal access, nor does it mean all of us will be able to eat typical diets.

The United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation defines food security as requiring “physical and economic” access for “all people at all times”. It not only requires access to “sufficient, safe and nutritious food”, but also access to foods that meet our “dietary requirements and food preferences”.

Read more: Getting creative with less. Recipe lessons from the Australian Women’s Weekly during wartime

Recent low yields of drought-impacted crops such as rice means supplies were limited even prior to the shortages created by panic buying.

Canneries are halting production on some of their standard lines as they struggle to access ingredients to keep up with unprecedented demand.

And measures introduced to support vulnerable groups such as meal delivery and “Basics Boxes” are currently unable to cater to diverse tastes and needs.

It’s likely, for those of us without special dietary needs, our everyday food habits will have to change.

Grow your own

Many Australians have turned to home food growing during COVID-19, with edible plants in nurseries quickly selling out of stock.

Growing your own is the most typical historical response to unstable food access. Limited supply during World War I led governments to encourage home and community food production. “Dig for Victory” campaigns were rolled out in the US and Canada, extending to the UK and Australia in World War II.

The benefits of having more localised food systems are also regularly revealed during extreme weather events.

Food access in Australia heavily relies on supply chains powered by trucks travelling vast distances. When roads are blocked – such as in the recent bushfires and the 2011 Queensland floods – food access is threatened unless you or your neighbours are growing your own.

Read more: Food democracy: why eating is unavoidably political

Community gardens

Food gardening typically requires time, the willingness to be attentive to plant needs, as well as outside space with adequate sun. Not everyone has the infrastructure, knowledge or inclination to do this.

People can turn to communal gardening instead, such as The Happiness Garden in Canberra. Community gardens have historically been great ways of up-skilling and learning with others, but social distancing measures makes this challenging. It’s also important to be wary of soil safety depending on previous uses of the land, particularly if you live in the inner city.

Still, there’s a wealth of information available online, so connecting with local gardening groups, swapping socially distant tips within your suburb, or setting up food-sharing points with neighbours are great options for now.

Urban foraging

Food foraging and hunting of feral animals have supplemented mainstream food supplies during past economic instability. Weeds such as dandelions and feral rabbits were regular additions to meals during the Great Depression.

For urban dwellers, hunting for wild rabbits is probably not a realistic option, but urban food foraging has experienced a resurgence. Recent rain means dandelions, purslane and nettles are rampant right now and, with the right preparation, they can be eaten in salads, soups and stir fries.

Expert guidance is also available online to help you avoid picking anything poisonous.

Start now to create good habits

Eliminating waste by being frugal and creative is key to making do in times of scarcity.

Knowing how best to store and preserve food (if you have limited fridge and freezer space consider bottling or fermentation); using whole foods (why peel carrots, potatoes and pumpkins?); and knowing substitution tricks (such as swapping eggs for sago), are important food skills in uncertain times.

Read more: 10 tips for eating locally and cutting the energy used to produce your food

This ability to adapt to uncertainty is critical to developing resilient communities.

As we look towards a future likely to be punctuated by more extreme weather events, environmental degradation and economic instability, we need robust national food security policy and local urban food systems planning that can meet the protracted challenges threatening our planetary health.

Right now is the perfect time for us to start experimenting with what we can do in our own homes and neighbourhoods to help secure our food futures.

– ref. Supermarket shelves stripped bare? History can teach us to ‘make do’ with food – https://theconversation.com/supermarket-shelves-stripped-bare-history-can-teach-us-to-make-do-with-food-135304

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling

University of Sydney researchers have developed a new searchable database that allows people, for the first time, to compare how many COVID-19 cases there are in every NSW postcode with each suburb’s socioeconomic status and age profile.

The database, which draws on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and NSW Health, could help inform decisions about how and when social distancing measures are relaxed.

“We created this database to provide some further transparency to the public, who may be feeling anxious about seeing the number of cases rising and want a postcode breakdown so they can see exactly what’s happening in their area,” said the University of Sydney’s Associate Professor Adam Kamradt-Scott, who has research expertise on Australia’s pandemic preparedness.

“We also wanted to provide further evidence to support NSW Health making decisions and giving advice to government.”

Read more: Eradicating the COVID-19 coronavirus is also the best economic strategy

Dr Kamradt-Scott said overlaying the case numbers with data on which suburbs have the highest proportion of people over 60 was important, as this cohort is at greatest risk.

“But socioeconomic status is also important,” he said.

“We know from previous public health research that people with lower socioeconomic status can have poorer health outcomes: they may struggle to access care, diet and nutrition may be a factor, these areas tend to have higher levels of smokers. These factors can have an influence on the prognosis if they get infected with the SARS-COV-2 virus.”

“So, for example, if there appears to be a new cluster of cases where there’s a lower socioeconomic status combined with a higher proportion of people over 60, it could mean, for example, that NSW Health could prioritise services and testing to that community.”

Dr Kamradt-Scott said his team began with NSW because that data was most readily available but they were keen to collaborate with other jurisdictions to provide the same detailed breakdown for other states and territories.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian this week said there would be increased testing in the Sydney suburbs of Penrith, Inner west, Liverpool, Randwick, Waverley, Woollahra, Blacktown, Cumberland, Westmead, Ryde, Manning and Lake Macquarie.

“We’re urging anybody in those high risk categories, anybody who specifically lives in those suburbs that were identified, if you have any symptoms, please come forward and get tested,” she said.

Read more: The coronavirus contact tracing app won’t log your location, but it will reveal who you hang out with

– ref. How many COVID-19 cases are in each NSW suburb? Search by postcode here – https://theconversation.com/how-many-covid-19-cases-are-in-each-nsw-suburb-search-by-postcode-here-136490

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kaltner, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney

As Australians grapple with the sudden and challenging changes that COVID-19 has brought to their daily lives, the impact of the virus is being felt in extreme ways by vulnerable children and families.

New research led by myself and EY partner Mark Galvin suggests we have a unique opportunity to support at-risk children who require care in the months ahead.

COVID-19 will increase exposure to abuse and neglect

Government responses aimed at reducing coronavirus infection rates may inadvertently increase risk for vulnerable children and families.

As a result of the partial lockdown, for instance, domestic and family violence services in Australia are experiencing surges in demand.

Read more: ‘Cabin fever’: Australia must prepare for the social and psychological impacts of a coronavirus lockdown

At the same time, the inability of teachers, health workers and community members to easily monitor child wellbeing is likely to temporarily reduce reporting of child abuse.

Child protection systems around the world have observed dramatic decreases in child abuse reporting in the past month.

Instability for children in foster care

Beyond these immediate concerns, there are other implications for children in need of child protection support.

Our research based on COVID-19 infection rates and carer demographics suggests that 20% of existing foster carer households could become affected by the virus through carer infection alone. This could affect placements for some 8,500 children in foster and kinship care.

As 88% of foster carers are over the age of 40, they are particularly vulnerable to more severe COVID-19 symptoms.

We know Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are also more at risk of becoming infected. As Aboriginal children are 11 times more likely to be in the care of the state, their foster and kinship care placements could be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 as a result.

Not all carers who contract the illness will be unable to provide ongoing care, but many children are likely to require support and alternative accommodations during this time.

And with foster carers already in critically short supply, child protection agencies may struggle to locate alternative options. Demand will increase further as more children enter care in the months ahead.

Read more: Coronavirus and ‘domestic terrorism’: how to stop family violence under lockdown

Suspensions of face-to-face biological family contact are also in place in Victoria and elsewhere, and can have significant implications on children’s relationships with their biological families.

Foster carers Anne and Luke (all names in the story are pseudoymns) are all too aware of the changing reality for 5-year-old Josh. Josh will be unable to meet with his biological parents in person or have sleepovers with his grandparents. The family will only be receiving virtual visits from support workers in the months ahead.

In our interviews with the family, Anne told us she is apprehensive.

Josh can be challenging at times, and not having any respite is going to create added stress in the house. Now the challenge of having us all cooped at home, and having to school Josh as well is going to be difficult.

Online services can be particularly difficult for vulnerable families to access and are a less-than-ideal substitute for maintaining relationships, which are necessary for returning children safely back to their families.

Can the foster care system respond?

However, there is some good news. Even if health concerns make finding foster carers more challenging during the crisis, an ensuing economic recession may not exacerbate the situation further.

Read more: ‘Stupid coronavirus!’ In uncertain times, we can help children through mindfulness and play

Recent history shows that as unemployment increases in Australia, so, too, does the number of people in our community who become foster carers.

Our analysis suggests this isn’t driven by foster care placement demand. Rather, more Australians are keen to support children in need when they have the time to do so.

As a result, now is the time to intensify foster carer recruitment efforts, assessment and training.

How we can support children and families

There are several strategies that can be used to meet the needs of at-risk children during this time. These include:

1. Ensuring the community understands the importance of reporting any concerns they have about children’s safety during the lockdown.

2. Improving support for the sector as it transitions to remote service delivery. This includes enabling child protection services to use technologies like video streaming and apps to connect with at-risk children and families, keep children connected to their biological families and provide remote counselling services.

3. Monitoring foster households at risk of COVID-19 and supporting these carers, including through socially distanced caseworker visits.

4. Making data-informed decisions on the re-accommodation of children where necessary and for placing new children entering the system, and;

5. Increasing efforts to recruit, train and support new foster and kinship carers.

The evidence suggests we have a window of opportunity to act swiftly to support the well-being of Australia’s must vulnerable children.

– ref. For children in foster care, the coronavirus pandemic could be extremely destabilising – https://theconversation.com/for-children-in-foster-care-the-coronavirus-pandemic-could-be-extremely-destabilising-135190

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute

Less than a month after restrictions first took effect, Australia appears to have contained the spread of COVID-19 more successfully than we could have possibly imagined.

But we’ve done so at unimaginable cost: large swathes of the economy have been shut down, leaving the livelihoods of millions of Australians on hold indefinitely. With new cases now on the decline, the conversation at today’s National Cabinet meeting will turn to what can reopen, and when.

But the economic costs of re-opening prematurely could be enormous.

The least costly economic strategy is eliminating COVID-19 from Australia altogether. Growing epidemiological evidence suggests it may be possible for us to eliminate coronavirus within the next two to three months.

Read more: The case for Endgame C: stop almost everything, restart when coronavirus is gone

New Zealand is pursuing such a strategy.

Australia’s state and territory governments should explicitly declare that they want to eliminate the virus, and maintain harsh lockdown restrictions until new cases are down to zero or close to it.

And in the meantime we’ll accrue invaluable intelligence from other countries about how best to emerge from lockdowns, and plan accordingly.

There’s no doubt this strategy would have big short-term economic costs.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that severe shutdowns like our level-three restrictions wipe out almost a quarter of economic activity, costing Australia’s economy about 2% of annual GDP for each month they remain in place.

This means a three-month shutdown would shave six percentage points off Australia’s annual GDP.

But the Government’s unprecedented package of economic support means many firms and households are well-placed to weather a short but severe storm.

Short term pain, long term gain

There’s also enormous economic upside if we eliminate the virus and the economy can more or less return to normal.

Schools and offices could re-open, as could bars, cafes and restaurants. Import and export goods would flow freely. International students could still come to Australia with quarantine and testing, and being COVID-free would mean more would choose Australia over alternative destinations.

Not everything could return to normal. International tourism would take a hit, because tight border controls would be maintained until the pandemic subsides abroad. But international tourism accounts for just 2% of our gross domestic product. And domestic travel would boom.

And while the prospect of 90 days of stage-three restrictions is daunting, it poses fewer economic costs than the alternatives.

Health Minister Greg Hunt has rightly ruled out allowing the virus to spread through the community.

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

Even with a so-called herd immunity strategy, there is little chance that economic life would return to normal for at least 12 months. Spatial distancing would still be needed to ensure our hospitals were not overwhelmed, and fear of infection would prevent many people from going outside. Many businesses would remain closed.

Adopting a Goldilocks strategy – where we try to find just the right balance between allowing some economic activity while keeping infections low – would mean fewer die, but would still be bad for the economy.

While there is hope that widespread use of face masks and improvements in tracking and tracing of the disease might change this – there is no certainty.

Sophisticated contract tracing and surveillance were initially effective in helping countries like Singapore to largely stay open, but they too have since resorted to a lockdown to keep infections under control.

Read more: Coronavirus: what causes a ‘second wave’ of disease outbreak, and could we see this in Australia?

In practice, few sectors currently closed could be reopened in Australia under a Goldilocks strategy.

Modellers at the University of Sydney estimate that even a 20% reduction in spatial distancing compliance would push rates of transmission back above one (that is, where one infected person on average infects more than one other).

That suggests schools could probably re-open, but many workplaces and university classes may have to stay closed.

As would domestic air travel and much non-essential retail. The political lobbying over which industry should have the privilege to re-open first would also be intense.

And whatever is required to keep infection rates stable would need to remain in place until there was herd immunity or a vaccine – and that probably means for as long as 18 months, assuming either happens.

We’ve a choice of a long or a short shutdown

For 18 months of lighter restrictions to be better for the economy than shutting down for another 2-to-3 months to eliminate the virus, the economic costs of a lighter shutdown need to be six to nine times less damaging to the economy than a severe shutdown.

That would require an almost complete removal of spatial distancing, which isn’t on the table.

If there were extended shutdowns, millions of Australians would come out the other side with significant scarring; many would never work again.

Firms that can endure a three-month shutdown without going bust are unlikely to survive for 12 months without further government support. And the budgetary costs of that support would become much bigger for future generations if extended to 12 months or more.

Read more: ‘Overjoyed’: a leading health expert on New Zealand’s coronavirus shutdown, and the challenging weeks ahead

Relaxing most restrictions without sparking a second round of contagion may be possible in time, but only after making enormous new investments in our ability to identify cases and isolate them quickly.

Economist Paul Romer argues for universal testing of Americans every two weeks; others call for a new digital surveillance state to enforce self-isolation. In each case the technological obstacles are large, and so we should start investing now. Extending the shut down would give us valuable time to prepare if we fail.

It’s commonly assumed that the public health and economic objectives of managing COVID-19 are in conflict. That’s wrong. Eliminating the virus from Australia is the best strategy for our health and for our economy.

– ref. Eradicating the COVID-19 coronavirus is also the best economic strategy – https://theconversation.com/eradicating-the-covid-19-coronavirus-is-also-the-best-economic-strategy-136488

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pasi Sahlberg, Professor of Education Policy, UNSW

Teachers say most students have lost the ability to focus, are less empathetic and spend less time on physical activity.

These are some of the results from our Growing Up Digital Australia study, in which we surveyed almost 2,000 teachers and school leaders across Australia.

We asked them how students from primary school to year 12 have changed in the last five years, and what might explain these changes.

Nearly four out of five teachers said they saw a decrease in students’ ability to focus on learning tasks, 80% saw a decline in students’ empathy and 60% observed students spending less time on physical activity.

Read more: Do you ‘zombie check’ your phone? How new tools can help you control technology over-use

These downward trends could be caused by many factors. But a good starting point is to look at the undeniably biggest change in children’s lives in the last decade – screen technology.

Growing up digital

Educational technologies have opened new opportunities for teaching and learning.

Teachers use technology to make complicated content more understandable, students learn how to communicate their knowledge across digital platforms like podcasts, and schools use technology to report students’ performance.

But a 24/7 connection to the internet comes with possible downsides too. Researchers and health experts around the world have expressed concerns about the possible consequences of heavy screen use on children.

The steady increase in depression, anxiety disorders and other mental health issues among young people has been well reported. And researchers have debated whether screens may be a possible reason for young people’s declining mental health.

Read more: Is social media damaging to children and teens? We asked five experts

It is hard to prove a direct causal link between worsening health outcomes and extended time spent on digital devices. But we can learn much about these complex relationships by exploring views and experiences of teachers, parents and young people themselves.

So, what do we know?

According to a recent poll by the Royal Children’s Hospital, 95% of high-school students, two-thirds of primary school children and one-third of preschoolers own a screen-based digital device.

In an earlier study we found 92% of Australian parents think smartphones and social media have reduced time children have for physical activity and outdoor play.

Four out of five parents said social media was a distraction in their child’s life, that impacted negatively on their well-being and family relations.

Another survey showed young people spend one-third of their time awake staring at screens.

In the Growing Up Digital in Australia study, 84% of teachers said digital technologies were a growing distraction in the learning environment.

One teacher told us:

The numbers of students with cognitive, social and behavioural difficulties has increased noticeably. Students appear to have more difficulty concentrating, making connections, learning with enthusiasm and increasing boredom in school.

Similar results were found in a study in Alberta, Canada in 2015.

Our data tells us more than 90% of teachers think the number of children with these kinds of challenges has increased over the last five years. Anxiety among students was also a common concern.

What parents can do

As most Australian children are studying from home this term, and perhaps next, parents will most likely make similar observations of their children – both positive and negative – as the teachers in our study.

Parents might see how fluently children use technologies to learn new concepts. They may also notice how hard or easy it is for their children to concentrate and stay away from the distracting parts of their digital devices.

If a child can’t get through all the tasks their teacher assigns them, it’s important for parents to know this doesn’t mean they are a poor learner or failing student.

Parents can try to understand how children feel about learning – what makes it interesting, what makes it boring and what makes it challenging. A student could be finding it difficult to get a task done due to distractions. The best help in that case is to support the child to stay away from the causes of distraction, which may be their smartphones.

Teachers should also, as much as possible, design learning activities with elements that don’t require any technology. For example, projects that include building, drawing or communicating with others at home can be easily done without devices.

Read more: Forget old screen ‘time’ rules during coronavirus. Here’s what you should focus on instead

Parents and teachers can work together to find smart ways to teach children safe and responsible use of media and digital technologies. Learning to regulate our own screen behaviours as adults and modelling this behaviour to our children can be a much more effective strategy than simply banning devices.

Studying from home can also be a good opportunity to help children learn to cook, play music or engage in other home-based activities we may wish we had time for but tend to void in our busy daily schedules.

Spending more time with children – with technology and without it – is now more important than ever.

Perhaps the best way to improve the quality of Australian education is to change how we do things. We should understand children are not who they used to be and better learning requires changing the ways both adults and children live with digital devices.

– ref. Students less focused, empathetic and active than before – technology may be to blame – https://theconversation.com/students-less-focused-empathetic-and-active-than-before-technology-may-be-to-blame-136249

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roba Abbas, Lecturer, School of Management, Operations and Marketing, University of Wollongong

The federal government has announced plans to introduce a contact tracing mobile app to help curb COVID-19’s spread in Australia.

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

However, rather than collecting location data directly from mobile operators, the proposed TraceTogether app will use Bluetooth technology to sense whether users who have voluntarily opted-in have come within nine metres of one another.

Contact tracing apps generally store 14-21 days of interaction data between participating devices to help monitor the spread of a disease. The tracking is usually done by government agencies. This form of health surveillance could help the Australian government respond to the coronavirus crisis by proactively placing confirmed and suspected cases in quarantine.

The TraceTogether app has been available in Singapore since March 20, and its reception there may help shed light on how the new tech will fare in Australia.

Read more: Privacy vs pandemic: government tracking of mobile phones could be a potent weapon against COVID-19

Your location is not being tracked

Internationally, contact tracing is being explored as a key means of containing the spread of COVID-19. The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies three basic steps to any form of contact tracing: contact identification, contact listing, and follow-up.

Contact identification records the mobile phone number and a random anonymised user ID. Contact listing includes a record of users who have come into close contact with a confirmed case, and notifies them of next steps such as self-isolation. Finally, follow-up entails frequent communication with contacts to monitor the emergence of any symptoms and test accordingly to confirm.

The TraceTogether app has been presented as a tool to protect individuals, families and society at large through a community data-driven approach. Details on proximity and contact duration are shared between devices that have the app installed. An estimated 17% of Singapore’s population has done this.

In an effort to preserve privacy, the app’s developers claim it retains proximity and duration details for 21 days, after which the oldest day’s record is deleted and the latest day’s data is added.

Read more: Tracking your location and targeted texts: how sharing your data could help in New Zealand’s level 4 lockdown

TraceTogether supposedly doesn’t collect users’ location data – thereby mitigating concerns about location privacy usually linked to such apps. But proximity and duration information can reveal a great deal about a user’s relative distance, time and duration of contact. A bluetooth-based app may not know where you are on Earth’s surface, but it can accurately infer your location when bringing a variety of data together.

No perfect solution exists

The introduction of a contact tracing app in Australia will allow health authorities to alert community members who have been in contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19.

However, as downloading the app is voluntary, its effectiveness relies on an uptake from a certain percentage of Australians – specifically 40%, according to an ABC report.

But this proposed model overlooks several factors. First, it doesn’t account for accessibility by vulnerable individuals who may not own or be able to operate a smartphone, potentially including the elderly or those living with cognitive impairment. Also, it’s presently unclear whether privacy and security issues have been or will be integrated into the functional design of the system when used in Australia.

This contact tracing model is also not open source software, and as such is not subject to audit or oversight. As it has currently been deployed in Singapore, it also places a government authority in control of the transfer of valuable contact and connection details. The question is now how these systems will stack up against corporate implementations like that being proposed by Google and Apple.

Also, those who criticise contact tracing point out that the technology is “after the fact” when it is too late, rather than preventive in nature, although it might act to lower transmission rates. Some research has proposed a more preemptive approach, location intelligence, implemented by responsible artificial intelligence, to predict (and respond to) how an outbreak might play out.

Others argue that if we’re all self-isolating, there should be no need for unproven technology, and that attention may instead be focused on digital immunity certificates, allowing some people to roam while others do not.

And in the apps created to respond to particular situations, there’s always the question of: “who owns the data?”. A pandemic-tracing app would need to have a limited lifetime, even if the user forgets to uninstall the COVID-19 app after victory has been declared over the pandemic. It must not become the de facto operational scenario – this would have major societal ramifications.

It’s all about trust

In the end, it may simply come down to trust. Do Australians trust their data in the hands of the government? The answer might well be “no”, but do we have any other choice?

Or for that matter what about data in the hands of corporations? Time and time again, government and corporates have failed to conduct adequate impact assessments, have been in breach of their own laws, regulations, policies and principles, have systems at scale that have suffered from scope and function creep, and have used data retrospectively in ways that were never intended. But is this the time for technology in the public interest to proliferate through the adoption of emerging technologies?

No one fears “tech for good”. But we must not relax fundamental requirements of privacy, strategies for maintaining anonymity, the encryption of data, and preventing our information from landing in the wrong hands. We need to ask ourselves, can we do better and what provisions are in place to maintain our civil liberties while at the same time remaining secure and safe?

– ref. The coronavirus contact tracing app won’t log your location, but it will reveal who you hang out with – https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-contact-tracing-app-wont-log-your-location-but-it-will-reveal-who-you-hang-out-with-136387

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Choong, Lecturer in Creative Advertising, University of the Sunshine Coast

Pete Evans came under fire again last week for fobbing off a A$15,000 machine touted to treat multiple ailments, including coronavirus. The BioCharger NG, according to Evans’s website, is a “hybrid subtle energy revitalisation platform that works to optimise your health, wellness and athletic performance”.

He posted to his 231,000 Instagram followers the machine contains thousands of different “recipes” of light and sound, which can counteract viruses, including a couple of “recipes” against COVID-19. What are Evans’ credentials again, you ask? He’s a celebrity chef.

This promotional hoodwink is tapping into consumer fears and targeting the vulnerable and desperate.

Fear in society will always exist, and it is important for consumers to look at things from a logical and practical level. Brands are not here to promote solutions to the pandemic – this should be taken from official sources.

Shifting sales

Businesses have in the past shown their versatility and ingenuity in pivoting in innovative ways. There’s nothing wrong with trying to turn a disaster into an opportunity, as John D. Rockefeller once said. It all comes down to what opportunities exist and how you can take advantage of them.

Business models must constantly evolve, and many businesses have shifted their primary presence online to overcome current operational restrictions. But there is more to it than simply going online – it is also about understanding the new modified needs and wants of the market, and how you can provide to these needs while the opportunity exists.

Major brands such as Coca-Cola, Audi and McDonald’s have reinforced medical advice of social distancing through advertising. Guinness advertised unity and hope. Social responsibility in businesses has never been more important than it is now.

But as well as selling #stayhome messages, brands still need to sell their products – and some brands are doing well in the shift to home-based life.

Desks and monitors are selling out and toy sales for the kids have skyrocketed. Sex toy sales are up, too.

Sales of loose-fitting loungewear, leggings and stretchy pants have been soaring, with companies like Myer advertising pyjamas as “Your home office dress code” – a knowing wink to consumers who will be doing away with the formal office wear for the time being.

Food delivery sales are also growing. Restaurants are selling consumers prepared food alongside make-it-yourself kits. Fast-food chains are advertising their cashless and contactless delivery ahead of advertising their food.

Selling panic

When does tapping into coronavirus fears become ethically challenged?

Bupa tried to promote its health insurance alongside advice on the importance of being prepared. But using the image of an empty shelf (and the contentious issue of toilet paper) during the pandemic is taking advantage of fear. Paralleling shortages in essential products to health insurance policies is merely creating unnecessary panic-buying among those who don’t or can’t afford private insurance.

Whether or not you have private health insurance during the pandemic is irrelevant as doctors, not insurers, determine treatment.

Tapping into panic to sell at a time when everyone feels vulnerable is unconscionable. Especially when the company sells items of need that aren’t part of their regular inventory. Fashion brands under the Mosaic parent company have crossed that line with marketing for hand sanitisers. Not only is this opportunistic profiteering, a pre-order doesn’t guarantee customers will receive the items any time soon.

Online wine retailer Winetime.co.nz sneakily tried to pass off an advertisement that resembled the official New Zealand government’s public service announcement. The social media ad was accused of taking advantage of the COVID-19 branding to promote the retailer’s products.

‘We live in a society’

Brands’ key responsibility here is to keep supplying what consumers want in a moral, conscientious and transparent manner. And as much as it is important for businesses to stay afloat, it is also critical for consumers to not succumb to unethical and false advertising.

As frozen meat brand Steak-umm said eloquently via its Twitter account, “we live in a society so please make informed decisions to the best of your ability and don’t let anecdotes dictate your worldview”.

Beware of advertising that taps into current fears and uncertainty. Scrutinise claims. If in doubt, discuss with family and friends.

The days of “what you see is what you get” have passed. It is now time for us to change the way we look at advertising.

– ref. Pivot to pandemic: how advertisers are using (and abusing) the coronavirus to sell – https://theconversation.com/pivot-to-pandemic-how-advertisers-are-using-and-abusing-the-coronavirus-to-sell-135681

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

We’ve seen images of people “panic buying” alcohol since lockdown started in March. Now new data from the advocacy group Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) shows people are not just stocking up for a rainy day. In households that have been buying extra alcohol, 70% are drinking more than usual too.

People tend to drink more during major disasters and crises. So it’s not surprising we’re seeing an increase in alcohol consumption during the coronavirus pandemic.

Most people drink for social reasons. It’s enjoyable, relaxing and a central part of Australian culture. But the FARE research found around one-third of those who purchased more alcohol were concerned about their own or someone else’s drinking.

So when do you need to worry that your drinking is becoming a problem?

How much is it OK to drink?

Most people drink within the Australian alcohol guidelines, which aim to reduce risk of health problems related to alcohol.

The new draft guidelines, released earlier this year, say healthy adults should drink no more than ten drinks a week and no more than four in any one day.

Read more: Cap your alcohol at 10 drinks a week: new draft guidelines

If you have existing health problems alcohol affects you more, and if you are under 18 or pregnant, you shouldn’t drink at all.

If you stay within these guidelines, you significantly lower your risk of a range of health problems including at least seven cancers (liver, oral cavity, pharyngeal, laryngeal, oesophageal, colorectal, liver and breast cancer), diabetes, liver disease, brain impairment, mental health problems and obesity.

Staying within these guidelines is one way to reduce the risk of drinking becoming a problem.

Signs your drinking may be problem

1. Not keeping up responsibilities

You’d be forgiven for not getting out of your pyjamas or putting on makeup everyday during lockdown. But if you find you’re not keeping up with major responsibilities at home, work, or school, it might be a sign your drinking is becoming a problem.

You might wake up with a hangover, for example, and can’t do your work or make the kids’ breakfast.

When alcohol starts to interrupt your daily living and functioning, it’s a sign you’re probably drinking too much.

2. Concern from others

If people close to you are starting to comment on how much you’re drinking or express concern you’re drinking too much, that can be one of the early signs you’re on a slippery slope.

Or if your relationships are becoming strained because of your drinking (for example, you’re getting into arguments with your partner more frequently), it might be time to look at how much you’re drinking.

3. Drinking to cope

In the FARE survey, one in four people said they were drinking to cope with stress.

Meanwhile, more than half the people who took part in a survey for Hello Sunday Morning, an online support site for people wanting to change their drinking, said they were drinking more from boredom or loneliness.

People who drink in response to stress tend to drink larger amounts of alcohol. If this is you, think about healthier activities to relax and manage how you’re feeling.

Read more: Coronavirus: it’s tempting to drink your worries away but there are healthier ways to manage stress and keep your drinking in check

4. Poorer mental health

Alcohol impacts on mental health and well-being. Although initially it creates a feeling of relaxation, it can increase anxiety and disrupt sleep.

If you have increased your drinking and your sleep is also disrupted it might be related. Alcohol affects quality of sleep that in turn lowers your ability to cope with stress.

5. Aggression and violence

If you find you’re becoming angry, aggressive or violent when you are drinking, it’s a problem. It may be best to stop drinking altogether.

Alcohol reduces inhibitions and also affects our ability to regulate our emotions. You may need to deal with underlying mental health issues.

6. Regular heavy drinking

Drinking alone is more common among people who are dependent on alcohol, but if you have a drink now and then on your own, it’s not in itself a sign you have a drinking problem.

But if you’re frequently drinking alone or frequently getting drunk when you are alone, the quantity and frequency may signal a problem. Daily drinking (alone or with others) is associated with dependence and other problems.

7. Building tolerance

If you’re finding the usual amount of alcohol doesn’t seem to have the same effect or you need to drink more to get the same effect, that’s a sign you have increased your tolerance to alcohol. It’s an early sign of dependence.

8. Unintended consequences

If you experience unintended consequences, it may indicate you’re not in full control of your drinking.

This might mean drinking more than you intended, getting drunk when you didn’t intend to, drinking so much you forget what happened (blacking out) or frequently waking up with a hangover.

Read more: What causes hangovers, blackouts and ‘hangxiety’? Everything you need to know about alcohol these holidays

Where to get help

If you want to check your consumption, try the AUDIT screening tool online.

If you’re trying to manage your drinking, Hello Sunday Morning offers a free online community of more than 100,000 like-minded people. You can connect and chat with others actively changing their alcohol consumption.

If you’d like to talk to someone about your drinking, call the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015. It’s a free call from anywhere in Australia.

You can also chat online with a counsellor at CounsellingOnline. Or talk to your GP about seeing a psychologist or counsellor.

Read more: What can you use a telehealth consult for and when should you physically visit your GP?

– ref. Worried about your drinking during lockdown? These 8 signs might indicate a problem – https://theconversation.com/worried-about-your-drinking-during-lockdown-these-8-signs-might-indicate-a-problem-136289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clive Phillips, Professor of Animal Welfare, Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics, The University of Queensland

In a controversial move, China recently reopened its wet markets, which sell fresh meat, produce and live animals. A wet market in Wuhan may have been the source of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has condemned the move, and the World Health Organization reportedly stated while wet markets don’t need to close down, they should be prohibited from selling illegal wildlife, such as pangolins and civet cats, for food, and food safety and hygiene regulations should be enforced.

Read more: Why shutting down Chinese ‘wet markets’ could be a terrible mistake

The demand for meat and milk in China is growing rapidly. Nearly 1.5 billion people live in China, and each person eats, on average, about 2.5 times more meat than in the early 1990s.

But unlike in the West – where well-established standards are dedicated to farm animal welfare – China has no animal welfare standards.

Poorly treated animals are stressed, and stressed animals are more likely to harbour new diseases because their immune systems are compromised.

This means these wet markets, where there are stressed animals in close contact with humans, are the perfect breeding ground for new diseases.

China urgently needs to restructure its animal industries for global food safety. “Clean” meat” (meat grown from cells in a laboratory) offers hope – but more on that later.

Stressed animals can’t fight diseases well

The consumption of wildlife per se does not increase the risk of disease transmission. Freshly killed deer in the Scottish highlands can provide venison that’s less risky than intensively farmed chickens, which are routinely infected with human pathogens.

When wildlife are stressed, farmed in small cages and kept in close contact with humans during the entire rearing and slaughtering process, including in wet markets, the risk of disease transmission rises.

Read more: How do viruses mutate and jump species? And why are ‘spillovers’ becoming more common?

When a pathogen challenges a healthy immune system, the body responds with inflammation to fight it. But when an animal is stressed, the hormone cortisol is released.

This causes the normal inflammatory response to change into a more limited activation of white blood cells. And this allows new pathogens to survive and multiply.

Wildlife under pressure

As well as importing more meat, the Chinese government has rapidly changed production systems from “peasant-style” agriculture to intensive animal production systems. Recent urban expansion has also put more pressure on agricultural land.

Some weeks ago I visited a new dairy farm in China with more than 30,000 cows. I passed through a destroyed village where small farms kept just a few cows each. Cows in the new megafarms are permanently housed and produce twice as much milk as the cows on small farms, being fed a richer diet.

But they typically last only two or three lactations because of the stress, whereas small farmers’ cows might be kept for a decade.

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

Similarly, wildlife populations have been put under significant pressure. The human population density in China has grown to four times that of the United States and 50 times that of Australia, all similar-sized countries with significant wilderness areas. Indigenous forest in China has diminished to just 3% of its original area.

Domesticated animals have been bred to tolerate traditional farming systems without getting unduly stressed. Wildlife have not.

The response to wildlife farming

In 2017, the Chinese government issued a law tightening up trade in wildlife, but still allowed wildlife not under state protection and obtained by a person with a hunting license to be sold. Fines for vendors and purchasers were as little as twice the value of the wildlife.

With limited “wild life” available for consumption, entrepreneurial Chinese have turned to farming them in an industry reportedly worth billions and employing 6 million people.

Read more: Coronavirus: why a blanket ban on wildlife trade would not be the right response

Keeping wildlife in small cages – as is practised on wildlife farms – causes them immense stress, traditionally recognised as “capture myopathy”, which can be so severe that it kills them.

But in February this year the law tightened to include a ban on all consumption of terrestrial wildlife, but only if they lived naturally, rather than on farms.

However, nearly 20,000 of the wildlife farms have reportedly been closed down since the COVID-19 outbreak began.

Signs of change

There are signs of growing awareness in China towards stress in their animals.

My colleagues and I at the University of Queensland recently established a Sino-Australian Animal Welfare Centre, and our latest research has found a growing number of scientists studying animal welfare issues in China.

What’s more, there’s a big opportunity to bring “clean meat” into the Chinese diet. Clean meat is grown synthetically from muscle cells, without the massive land and water resources required of traditional meat production in China, without the emissions of pollutants and, most importantly, without the risk of transmission of novel diseases.

In fact, plant-based meat substitutes are gaining favour in China as more sustainable and healthy products. A 2018 study found Chinese consumers’ intention to eat less meat had a positive emotional response.

Read more: Coronavirus has finally made us recognise the illegal wildlife trade is a public health issue

And Chinese people are more likely to purchase clean meat and vegetarian-based alternatives than people in the United States.

Cultural studies suggest that in general, Chinese people have many of the right qualities for widescale adoption. They act in the collective interest, not for themselves, they are adaptable and entrepreneurial, and their society is driven by competition and success in the face of adversity.

Read more: Calling COVID-19 a ‘Chinese virus’ is wrong and dangerous – the pandemic is global

The Chinese government also supports using advanced agricultural technology to solve food safety (and security) issues.

Chinese scientists are already working on clean meat. In fact, the first cultured meat there, from pig muscle stem cells, was produced last year by scientists at Nanjing Agricultural University.

Clean meat is expected to comprise 35% of the global meat market in 2040. Perhaps it will be even faster in China to avoid more animal-borne diseases emerging.

– ref. Coronavirus: live animals are stressed in wet markets, and stressed animals are more likely to carry diseases – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-live-animals-are-stressed-in-wet-markets-and-stressed-animals-are-more-likely-to-carry-diseases-135479

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pasi Sahlberg, Professor of Education Policy, UNSW

Teachers say most students have lost the ability to focus, are less empathetic and spend less time on physical activity.

These are some of the results from our Growing Up Digital Australia study, in which we surveyed almost 2,000 teachers and school leaders across Australia.

We asked them how students from primary school to year 12 have changed in the last five years, and what might explain these changes.

Nearly four out of five teachers said they saw a decrease in students’ ability to focus on learning tasks, 80% saw a decline in students’ empathy and 60% observed students spending less time on physical activity.

Read more: Do you ‘zombie check’ your phone? How new tools can help you control technology over-use

These downward trends could be caused by many factors. But a good starting point is to look at the undeniably biggest change in children’s lives in the last decade – screen technology.

Growing up digital

Educational technologies have opened new opportunities for teaching and learning.

Teachers use technology to make complicated content more understandable, students learn how to communicate their knowledge across digital platforms like podcasts, and schools use technology to report students’ performance.

But a 24/7 connection to the internet comes with possible downsides too. Researchers and health experts around the world have expressed concerns about the possible consequences of heavy screen use on children.

The steady increase in depression, anxiety disorders and other mental health issues among young people has been well reported. And researchers have debated whether screens may be a possible reason for young people’s declining mental health.

Read more: Is social media damaging to children and teens? We asked five experts

It is hard to prove a direct causal link between worsening health outcomes and extended time spent on digital devices. But we can learn much about these complex relationships by exploring views and experiences of teachers, parents and young people themselves.

So, what do we know?

According to a recent poll by the Royal Children’s Hospital, 95% of high-school students, two-thirds of primary school children and one-third of preschoolers own a screen-based digital device.

In an earlier study we found 92% of Australian parents think smartphones and social media have reduced time children have for physical activity and outdoor play.

Four out of five parents said social media was a distraction in their child’s life, that impacted negatively on their well-being and family relations.

Another survey showed young people spend one-third of their time awake staring at screens.

In the Growing Up Digital in Australia study, 84% of teachers said digital technologies were a growing distraction in the learning environment.

One teacher told us:

The numbers of students with cognitive, social and behavioural difficulties has increased noticeably. Students appear to have more difficulty concentrating, making connections, learning with enthusiasm and increasing boredom in school.

Similar results were found in a study in Alberta, Canada in 2015.

Our data tells us more than 90% of teachers think the number of children with these kinds of challenges has increased over the last five years. Anxiety among students was also a common concern.

What parents can do

As most Australian children are studying from home this term, and perhaps next, parents will most likely make similar observations of their children – both positive and negative – as the teachers in our study.

Parents might see how fluently children use technologies to learn new concepts. They may also notice how hard or easy it is for their children to concentrate and stay away from the distracting parts of their digital devices.

If a child can’t get through all the tasks their teacher assigns them, it’s important for parents to know this doesn’t mean they are a poor learner or failing student.

Parents can try to understand how children feel about learning – what makes it interesting, what makes it boring and what makes it challenging. A student could be finding it difficult to get a task done due to distractions. The best help in that case is to support the child to stay away from the causes of distraction, which may be their smartphones.

Teachers should also, as much as possible, design learning activities with elements that don’t require any technology. For example, projects that include building, drawing or communicating with others at home can be easily done without devices.

Read more: Forget old screen ‘time’ rules during coronavirus. Here’s what you should focus on instead

Parents and teachers can work together to find smart ways to teach children safe and responsible use of media and digital technologies. Learning to regulate our own screen behaviours as adults and modelling this behaviour to our children can be a much more effective strategy than simply banning devices.

Studying from home can also be a good opportunity to help children learn to cook, play music or engage in other home-based activities we may wish we had time for but tend to void in our busy daily schedules.

Spending more time with children – with technology and without it – is now more important than ever.

Perhaps the best way to improve the quality of Australian education is to change how we do things. We should understand children are not who they used to be and better learning requires changing the ways both adults and children live with digital devices.

– ref. Students less focused, empathic and active than before – technology may be to blame – https://theconversation.com/students-less-focused-empathic-and-active-than-before-technology-may-be-to-blame-136249

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kurt Iveson, Associate Professor of Urban Geography and Research Lead, Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney

Authorities have imposed significant restrictions on the size, purpose and location of gatherings in public space to slow the transmission of COVID-19. The massive impacts of these escalating restrictions over the past two months show us just how significant public spaces are for the life of our cities. A longer-term concern is the risk that living with these measures might normalise restrictions on, and surveillance of, our access to public space and one another.

Right now, public health is the priority. But access to public spaces was already significantly and unjustly restricted for many people before the coronavirus pandemic. Current restrictions could both intensify existing inequalities in access and reinforce trends towards “locking down” public space.

Read more: Public spaces bind cities together. What happens when coronavirus forces us apart?

We must ensure these restrictions do not become permanent. And once the crisis is over, we also should act on existing inequitable restrictions.

Restrictions have inequitable impacts

Unless public health interventions are enacted with an awareness of their profoundly uneven consequences, we may well “flatten the curve” in ways that add to existing inequalities and injustices.

Research suggests restrictions on public space have greater impacts on people who have less access to private space. People without stable homes, and those with restricted access to domestic space, tend to live more of their lives in public. Public space restrictions have far greater consequences for these people.

We can see this relationship very clearly: the restrictions are paired with instructions to stay at home. This applies to everyone. But, while it’s inconvenient for some, it’s impossible for others.

It’s certainly the case for the homeless. It will also be true of others. For instance, students may be living in crowded conditions in shared, family or informal accommodation, with no access to quiet private space for study.

This is why researchers and activists are demanding restrictions on public space be accompanied by provisions to make such people’s lives less precarious. Suggested measures include a moratorium on evictions and safe and free accommodation for rough sleepers.

Read more: Homelessness and overcrowding expose us all to coronavirus. Here’s what we can do to stop the spread

Research also shows us restrictions on public gatherings and public space were a feature of everyday urban life for many people well before physical distancing came in.

Young people of colour who gather in small groups in public spaces frequently report being stopped, searched and moved on by police and security guards. People on low incomes were already excluded from commercial public spaces like cafes and shopping malls. People asking for spare change or leafleting passers-by were barred from quasi-public spaces that are subject to special restrictions. People who cannot climb stairs were unable to use basic public infrastructure, like train stations, that lacks lift or ramp access. The list goes on.

These pre-existing restrictions were the product of exclusion and injustice. We should not have tolerated this before the crisis and it demands our renewed attention after the crisis.

We also know authorities responsible for regulating public space, including police, tend to enforce rules and restrictions selectively. In New South Wales and Victoria, police chiefs have been explicit that police will use their discretion in enforcing current restrictions.

The problem is this use of discretion can be informed by stereotype and prejudice. For communities who already felt unfairly targeted by police, statements about the use of discretion will be far from reassuring.

Read more: How city squares can be public places of protest or centres of state control

‘Temporary’ really must be temporary

We must guard against a common tendency for temporary measures to become more permanent. Some of the extraordinary powers given to police to break up gatherings and fine people who fail to observe restrictions have been time-limited. But having been used once for a particular problem, the risk is such powers might be enacted more often in future.

We have seen this happen with closures of public space for commercial events. Each closure is justified as being only temporary, but such closures have become increasingly common. The cumulative effect is a creeping commercialisation of public space.

One can also see how “temporary” experiments with digital surveillance to slow contagion could become permanent. Tech corporations are offering analyses of mobile phone and other data to profile public activity and to trace the movements and contacts of individuals who have contracted the coronavirus.

It’s the latest step in the datafication of urban everyday life. This process erodes privacy and grants more and more power to corporations and governments. It is easy to see how “contact tracing” could also be applied to protesters or stigmatised minorities.

Read more: Darwin’s ‘smart city’ project is about surveillance and control

Normalisation of restrictions must be resisted

Coronavirus-related restrictions are obvious to us because they have been imposed so rapidly. However, we should reflect on how other restrictions have become normalised precisely because they happened gradually, making them less visible and contested.

For example, over the past decade we have seen a creeping “gating” of a public spaces like parks and school ovals. Free access to those spaces has been greatly reduced when they are not in use for organised education or sports.

Read more: Pushing casual sport to the margins threatens cities’ social cohesion

Interestingly, as urban authorities try to provide large populations with access to public spaces in which they can maintain recommended physical distance, some existing restrictions are being rethought. Cities are closing streets to cars to give pedestrians more space rather than having to crowd onto footpaths. It will be interesting to see if such measures persist once physical-distancing restrictions are lifted.

Let’s hope our experience of the inconvenience and frustration of restricted access to public space will translate into a more widely shared determination not only to end these restrictions when the health crisis is over, but also to act on the unjust exclusions and restrictions that were already a feature of urban life.

As with so many other aspects of our society, it is not enough simply to go back to how things were before. We must ensure our public spaces are not unjustly restricted when the next crisis comes along.

– ref. We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone – we must reclaim public space lost to the coronavirus crisis – https://theconversation.com/we-dont-know-what-weve-got-till-its-gone-we-must-reclaim-public-space-lost-to-the-coronavirus-crisis-135817

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

After weeks of devastating reports of local newspaper closures and regional broadcast stations turning off local news services, media supporters and observers were united in joy as the Australian government announced a coronavirus relief package for local journalism.

The four-part initiative has been designed to assist local newspapers and commercial free-to-air radio and television and subscription television, following calls for a lifeline from the industry and the communities they serve.

Although coronavirus might have hastened their financial woes, it’s clear that many of these news outlets have been in trouble for a while, with falling advertising and subscription revenue reductions.

Last year was described as “the worst advertising market since the global financial crisis for the television industry”.

Australian metropolitan radio revenues fell by 6% in 2019.

Regional newspapers have been buoyed by local advertising, but even that has its limits.

Two components of the government’s COVID package, a $41m waiver on the tax imposed on radio and television services for spectrum use, and suspension of key parts of the commercial television Australian content rules, will save commercial broadcasters millions in 2020.

Both major industry organisations, Free TV and Commercial Radio Australia, cautiously welcomed the announcement, but sought more action from the government.

The third component, a $50 million Public Interest News Gathering program, will fund journalism for regional broadcasters and print services.

The most heartening line in the government’s press release was the acknowledgement by the minister that

the government recognises that public interest journalism is essential in informing and strengthening local communities.

ABC and SBS left out

In the absence of other government action, there remain two big losers from the COVID-19 announcement for journalism.

First, it excluded the trusted national public broadcasters, even though SBS must also be experiencing a reduction in advertising revenue.

Further, there was no indication the ABC would be given any reprieve from the combined budget cuts/freezes that will total almost $800 million by 2022.

Read more: The ABC didn’t receive a reprieve in the budget. It’s still facing staggering cuts

In the midst of the COVID emergency, which has brought a record number of people to the broadcaster, the ABC is continuing to manage an annual budget reduction of over $100 million while delivering its range of services.

As has been widely acknowledged, it has also increased emergency broadcasting firstly for the devastating summer bushfires, and now for the coronavirus emergency, without any specific funds.

Local drama in jeopardy

Independent producers of Australian programs, including Australian drama, documentary and children’s drama, are also losers in the COVID announcement.

The decision to suspend commercial television Australian content rules for 2020 is couched in terms of production “disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic”.

However, there are long lead times for much drama and documentary production, and commercial free-to-air broadcasters are allowed to average drama content over three years.

This means a more nuanced and flexible approach to developing and commissioning projects could have helped broadcasters and kept the production sector alive.

In an already hard hit creative sector, TV producers look like losing at least a year of commercial commissions. That’s worth $250 million to the sector.

The government statement also implies the reduction in the Australian content rule may extend into 2021. If that happens, it’ll bring to an end Australian content policy settings that have been in place for almost 60 years.

Originally introduced by the Menzies government, the policy was put in place to ensure there was a strong Australian identity on local television.

Chilling notes in the details

Finally, the government has included as part of its announcement, a fast-tracked consultation process on “Harmonising Regulation to Support Australian Content”.

Media observers will be pleased the process has finally started, but all will be concerned about the timing.

It seems more than a little odd for some of the most significant reforms to the way Australian content is delivered via screens are included in an emergency funding announcement.

Read more: Why the ABC, and the public that trusts it, must stand firm against threats to its editorial independence

Buried on page 41 of the document, for example, is an option which would require the ABC and SBS to spend their funding to make up for commercial shortcomings in children’s programming.

Or to put it another way, if that option were accepted, the ABC and SBS would be told by the government of the day to do what the government wants, without any extra funding. That’s completely opposite to the idea of an independent public broadcaster. Perhaps it’s a case for the Inbestigators.

– ref. Regional media get COVID lifeline but ABC, SBS remain in peril – https://theconversation.com/regional-media-get-covid-lifeline-but-abc-sbs-remain-in-peril-136394

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Kamradt-Scott, Associate professor, University of Sydney

US President Donald Trump has announced the US is cutting its funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO) – a decision that will have major implications for the global health response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The US contributes more than US$400 million to the WHO per year, though it is already US$200 million in arrears. It is the organisation’s largest donor and gives about 10 times what China does per year.

Trump has accused the organisation of mishandling and covering up the initial spread of COVID-19 in China, and of generally failing to take a harsher stance toward China.

What will Trump’s decision to cut funding mean for the organisation?

Read more: Here’s why the WHO says a coronavirus vaccine is 18 months away

Who are members of the WHO?

The WHO was established in 1948 to serve as the directing and coordinating authority in international health. It was created with a mandate to improve the health of the world’s population, and defined health as

a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

While various civil society, industry and faith-based organisations can observe WHO meetings, only countries are allowed to become members. Every May, member states attend the World Health Assembly in Geneva to set the WHO’s policy direction, approve the budget and review the organisation’s work.

Currently, there is 194 WHO member states, which means the organisation has one more member state than the United Nations.

How is the WHO funded?

The WHO receives the majority of its funding from two primary sources. The first is membership dues from countries, which are described as “assessed contributions”.

Assessed contributions are calculated based on the gross domestic product and size of population, but they have not increased in real terms since the level of payments was frozen in the 1980s.

The second source of funding is voluntary contributions. These contributions, provided by governments, philanthropic organisations and private donations, are usually earmarked for specific projects or initiatives, meaning the WHO has less ability to reallocate them in the event of an emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

Have countries pulled funding before?

Over more than 70 years of operations, a number of countries have failed to pay their membership dues on time.

At one point the former Soviet Union announced it was withdrawing from the WHO and refused to pay its membership fees for several years. When it then rejoined in 1955, it argued for a reduction in its back dues, which was approved.

As a result of nonpayment of assessed contributions, we have seen several instances where the WHO has been on the verge of bankruptcy. Fortunately, governments have usually acted responsibly and eventually paid back their fees.

Has there been political criticism of the WHO before?

Yes. In 2009, the WHO was accused of acting too early in declaring swine flu a pandemic, in part over concerns it had been pressured by pharmaceutical companies.

Five years later, the organisation was accused of acting too late in declaring the West African Ebola outbreak a public health emergency.

Trump has criticised the WHO for not acting quickly enough in sending its experts to assess China’s efforts to contain COVID-19 and call out China’s lack of transparency over its handling of the initial stage of the crisis.

But these criticisms ignore China’s sovereignty. The WHO does not have the power to force member states to accept a team of WHO experts to conduct an assessment. The country must request WHO assistance.

Nor does the organisation have the power to force a country to share any information. It can only request.

Of course, Trump’s comments also ignore the fact the WHO did eventually send a team of experts to conduct an assessment in mid-February after finally obtaining Chinese approval. The results from this investigation provided important information about the virus and China’s efforts to halt its spread.

Does China have increasing influence over the WHO?

Understandably China has grown in power and economic influence since 2003, when then-Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland publicly criticised it for trying to hide the spread of the SARS virus.

China has also been criticised for blocking Taiwan’s bid to join the organisation. Taiwan has had one of the most robust responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

But China is ultimately just one of the WHO’s 194 member states. And one of the great ironies of Trump’s criticism is that the organisation has been criticised by other member states for decades for being influenced too heavily by the United States.

Read more: China’s economic recovery depends on the rest of the world

What happens if the US cuts funding?

If enacted, these funding cuts may cause the WHO to go bankrupt in the middle of a pandemic. That might mean the WHO has to fire staff, even as they are trying to help low- and middle-income countries save lives.

It will also mean the WHO is less able to coordinate international efforts around issues like vaccine research, procurement of personal protective equipment for health workers and providing technical assistance and experts to help countries fight the pandemic.

More broadly, if the US extends these cuts for other global health initiatives coordinated by the WHO, it will likely cause people in low income countries to lose access to vital medicines and health services. Lives will be lost.

There will also be a cost to the United States’ long-term strategic interests.

For decades, the world has looked to the US to provide leadership on global health issues. Due to Trump’s attempt to shift blame from his administration’s failures to prepare the US for the arrival of COVID-19, he has now signalled the US is no longer prepared to provide that leadership role.

And one thing we do know is that if nature abhors a vacuum, politics abhors it even more.

– ref. Explainer: what Donald Trump’s funding cuts to WHO mean for the world – https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-donald-trumps-funding-cuts-to-who-mean-for-the-world-136384