Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margie Rogers, Lecturer, Early Childhood Education, University of New England

Scientists don’t know exactly what percentage of the population will need to get a COVID vaccine to achieve herd immunity. Some diseases, such as whooping cough, need very high rates of vaccination between 90-95%.

The rise of new, more infectious coronavirus variants might mean even more people may need to be vaccinated against COVID than we initially thought.

One question therefore becomes crucial: how will governments convince enough people to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity?

Read more: Herd immunity is the end game for the pandemic, but the AstraZeneca vaccine won’t get us there

One method might be to use emotional storytelling to sway people who aren’t convinced by fact-based logical messaging.

Appeals to logic or emotive stories?

Many people will say yes to being vaccinated. One international survey, published in October last year, found an average of 71.5% of participants (from 19 countries) would be likely to accept a COVID vaccine.

But some people who would normally be pro-vaccination might have concerns about the speed of the approvals of these vaccines.

Read more: COVID vaccines have been developed in record time. But how will we know they’re safe?

To deal with such fears, the Australian government has crafted public health messages that appeal to logic using facts, figures and explanations about how the process has been done safely.

Read more: The government is spending almost A$24m to convince us to accept a COVID vaccine. But will its new campaign actually work?

However, other people, particularly those who are unlikely to get vaccinated, may not necessarily respond well to these messages.

Evidence suggests vaccine-hesitant groups are less likely to respond to factual information particularly from “pro-vaccine” sources.

But they may respond more to personal stories about the effects of the virus. In my area of research, we call these stories “cultural health narratives”.

Within the anti-vax movement, these narratives are often powerful stories of people negatively affected by vaccinations, or what they believe are vaccine-related side effects. These emotional accounts are very powerful because we’re attracted to narratives and we live our lives through them.

We tell stories about our lives to ourselves, our friends and families through conversations, photo diaries and social media. We consume other people’s stories through novels, news, movies and so on.

What’s more, some countries have done very well controlling the virus using low-technology health measures, such as hand washing, social distancing, border shutdowns and quarantining.

This might sound like a digression, but stay with me — the downside for these countries is that most people in the population don’t know anyone who has had COVID nor lost anyone to the disease. This might mean they are less likely to see the need to be vaccinated.

This also means there’s a lack of personal COVID health stories within those countries, including Australia. Anti-vax messages often use emotional stories for their own ends, and their messages can fill these gaps if governments don’t report their own real health stories.

How could governments use storytelling?

When we hear a story, we often lower our guard and tend to start responding emotionally to the characters. Parents, educators and religious leaders have long used this as a way of teaching.

Governments could use storytelling to potentially improve COVID vaccination rates particularly among those who are unlikely to get the jab.

Governments could add emotional health stories to their vaccination messages.

These narratives could show the negative effects of the virus on people’s lives, and/or they can be used to show the positive effects of vaccinations to help avoid disease.

These could be targeted towards those that might be more likely to be influenced by stories, using traditional and social media platforms.

These true, personal video accounts could include:

Do health stories work?

Emotional and personal health narratives can be a powerful way of communicating health messaging, and the benefits of vaccination.

One study, conducted by Professor Julie Leask and colleagues, showed 37 parents both anti-vaxxer health stories and medical pro-vaccination stories.

The pro-vaccination stories included footage of children with measles and whooping cough. Every focus group recalled the footage, with some parents labelling it “shocking” and “devastating”. The authors noted that parents, when voicing support of vaccination, leaned on stories in the decision process — not just facts.

The authors concluded that “stories about people affected by vaccine-preventable diseases need to re-enter the public discourse”.

Another study highlighted the positive effects of first-person narratives on young people to help them avoid Type 2 diabetes. In this study, personal narratives told by people who had the disease were most effective in persuading the participants to change their lifestyle to avoid Type 2 diabetes.

Social media will be challenging

People get information about vaccination from health workers, relatives, friends, and social and traditional media.

Social media platforms can be problematic because if someone clicks an article with vaccine misinformation, more articles with even more misleading ideas are likely to appear in their news feeds. The opposite also occurs; if someone clicks on pro-vaccination information, more pro-vaccination information is fed to them. This can lead to polarisation within the community.

Dealing with misleading health messages about COVID vaccines will be very important for governments, and it’ll be vital for them to stay in front of anti-vax COVID messaging. Factual information will be essential, but true, personal health stories are another tool to convince particular groups.

It seems the federal government is not yet specifically targeting these groups, but may need to in the race for COVID herd immunity.

– ref. Why telling stories could be a more powerful way of convincing some people to take a COVID vaccine than just the facts – https://theconversation.com/why-telling-stories-could-be-a-more-powerful-way-of-convincing-some-people-to-take-a-covid-vaccine-than-just-the-facts-155050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Davis, Professor, Research Institute for Environment & Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Charles Darwin University

There aren’t many parts of the world where you can discover a completely new assemblage of living creatures. But after sampling underground water in a remote, arid region of northern Australia, we discovered at least 11, and probably more, new species of stygofauna.

Stygofauna are invertebrates that have evolved exclusively in underground water. A life in complete darkness means these animals are often blind, beautifully translucent and often extremely localised – rarely living anywhere else but the patch they’re found in.

The species we discovered live in a region earmarked for fracking by the Northern Territory and federal government. As with any mining activity, it’s important future gas extraction doesn’t harm groundwater habitats or the water that sustains them.

Our findings, published today, show the importance of conducting comprehensive environmental assessments before extraction projects begin. These assessments are especially critical in Australia’s north, where many plants and animals living in surface and groundwater have not yet been documented.

When the going gets tough, go underground

Stygofauna were first discovered in Western Australia in 1991. Since then, these underground, aquatic organisms have been recorded across the continent. Today, more than 400 Australian species have been formally recognised by scientists.

Stygofauna are the ultimate climate change refugees. They would have inhabited surface water when inland Australia was much wetter. But as the continent started drying around 14 million years ago, they moved underground to the relatively stable environmental conditions of subterranean aquifers.

Read more: Hidden depths: why groundwater is our most important water source

Today, stygofauna help maintain the integrity of groundwater food webs. They mostly graze on fungal and microbial films created by organic material leaching from the surface.

In 2018, the final report of an independent inquiry called for a critical knowledge gap regarding groundwater to be filled, to ensure fracking could be done safely in the Northern Territory. We wanted to determine where stygofauna and microbial assemblages occurred, and in what numbers.

Our project started in 2019, when we carried out a pilot survey of groundwater wells (bores) in the Beetaloo Sub-basin and Roper River region. The Beetaloo Sub-basin is potentially one of the most important areas for shale gas in Australia.

What we found

The stygofauna we found range in size from centimetres to millimetres and include:

• two new species of ostracod: small crustaceans enclosed within mussel-like shells

• a new species of amphipod: this crustacean acts as a natural vacuum cleaner, feeding on decomposing material

• multiple new species of copepods: tiny crustaceans which form a major component of the zooplankton in marine and freshwater systems

• a new syncarid: another crustacean entirely restricted to groundwater habitats

• a new snail and a new worm.

These species were living in groundwater 400 to 900 kilometres south of Darwin. We found them mostly in limestone karst habitats, which contain many channels and underground caverns.

Perhaps most exciting, we also found a relatively large, colourless, blind shrimp (Parisia unguis) previously known only from the Cutta Cutta caves near Katherine. This shrimp is an “apex” predator, feeding on other stygofauna — a rare find for these kinds of ecosystems.

Protecting groundwater and the animals that live there

The Beetaloo Sub-basin in located beneath a major freshwater resource, the Cambrian Limestone Aquifer. It supplies water for domestic use, cattle stations and horticulture.

Surface water in this dry region is scarce, and it’s important natural gas development does not harm groundwater.

The stygofauna we found are not the first to potentially be affected by a resource project. Stygofauna have also been found at the Yeelirrie uranium mine in Western Australia, approved by the federal government in 2019. More research will be required to understand risks to the stygofauna we found at the NT site.

Read more: It’s not worth wiping out a species for the Yeelirrie uranium mine

The discovery of these new NT species has implications for all extractive industries affecting groundwater. It shows the importance of thorough assessment and monitoring before work begins, to ensure damage to groundwater and associated ecosystems is detected and mitigated.

Where to from here

Groundwater is vital to inland Australia. Underground ecosystems must be protected – and not considered “out of sight, out of mind”.

Our study provides the direction to reduce risks to stygofauna, ensuring their ecosystems and groundwater quality is maintained.

Comprehensive environmental surveys are needed to properly document the distribution of these underground assemblages. The new stygofauna we found must also be formally recognised as a new species in science, and their DNA sequence established to support monitoring programs.

Many new tools and approaches are available to support environmental assessment, monitoring and management of resource extraction projects. These include remote sensing and molecular analyses.

Deploying the necessary tools and methods will help ensure development in northern Australia is sustainable. It will also inform efforts to protect groundwater habitats and stygofauna across the continent.

Read more: Victoria quietly lifted its gas exploration pause but banned fracking for good. It’s bad news for the climate

– ref. Blind shrimps, translucent snails: the 11 mysterious new species we found in potential fracking sites – https://theconversation.com/blind-shrimps-translucent-snails-the-11-mysterious-new-species-we-found-in-potential-fracking-sites-155137

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

Reports that Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson is considering calling for carbon border levies at the G7 summit to be held in London in June have produced a predictable reaction from the Australian government.

The levies would impose tariffs on carbon-intensive goods from countries such as Australia that haven’t adopted a carbon price or a 2050 net-zero emissions target.

Appearing to be shocked by the news, Energy Minister Angus Taylor declared that Australia is “dead against” carbon tariffs.

They were a “new form of protectionism designed to shield local industries from free trade”.

In fact they are already the policy of the European Union and the US, where President Joe Biden calls them a “carbon adjustment fee against countries that are failing to meet their climate and environmental obligations”. Canada, which has an economy-wide price on carbon, isn’t worried.

Saying you’re dead against something doesn’t stop it, and nor does asserting that it is anti free trade, when it is just as arguable that it is pro fair trade because it denies exporters from countries that aren’t taking action against climate change an unfair advantage.

Australia not the primary target

The mining industry itself made this point during the Gillard government’s introduction of Australia’s short-lived carbon price.

It would leave Australian exporters at a “disadvantage compared with international competitors”.

Australia isn’t the primary target in any event. The main aim of carbon tariffs would be to encourage China’s leader Xi Jinping to shift his country’s zero emissions date from 2060 to 2050, benefiting the rest of the world.

Read more: Vital Signs: a global carbon price could soon be a reality – Australia should prepare

If Xi Jinping does it, he’ll be on a level playing field with much of the world, although not with Australia, whose fate, like that of Britain’s Admiral Byng in 1757 would be used “to encourage the others”.

Complaining won’t much help. The International Monetary Fund has endorsed the idea, saying

in the absence of an agreement on carbon pricing – which would be by far preferable – applying the same carbon prices on the same products irrespective of where they are produced could help avoid shifting emissions out of the EU to countries with different standards

The World Trade Organisation, which has in the past has pushed back against environmental considerations in trade, is neutered.

World Trade Organisation powerless

In the late 1990s the WTO struck down a range of environmental restrictions imposed by the United States that required imported tuna to be labelled “dolphin safe” and required shrimp catchers to take action to protect turtles.

These decisions proved disastrous for the WTO, producing bitter hostility from the environmental movement and contributing to mass protests at the 1999 WTO meeting, which became known as the Battle of Seattle and ultimately killed the Doha round of trade negotiations.

Right now the WTO is in the organisational equivalent of an induced coma. By refusing to fill vacancies as they arose, the Trump Administration denied its appellate panel a quorum, forcing it to stop hearing cases.

The result is that any appeal to the WTO against carbon border tariffs would be left in limbo. US President Joe Biden has agreed to the appointment of a new WTO director general, stalled by Trump, but is in no hurry to re-establish the appellate body.

Instead, he will first try to refashion the WTO into an organisation that supports his own policies, among them stronger environmental measures, carbon tariffs and “Buy American” provisions. When reformed, the appellate body will give complaints from Australia’s government short shrift.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shown some signs of recognising these realities, making baby steps towards announcing a 2050 zero emissions target.

But time is short. Morrison will have to either face down the denialists and do-nothingists on his own side of politics, or set himself, and Australia, up for a series of humiliations on the international stage, with real and damaging consequences.

– ref. No point complaining about it, Australia will face carbon levies unless it changes course – https://theconversation.com/no-point-complaining-about-it-australia-will-face-carbon-levies-unless-it-changes-course-155200

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

Pauline Hanson has told the government it should drop its proposed watering down of the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) if it wants One Nation to continue negotiations on the industrial relation legislation.

One Nation holds two of the five crossbench Senate votes the government needs to pass its legislation, which contains a raft of reforms.

In a letter to Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter delivered late Monday, Hanson said that while she and her party’s industrial relations spokesman Malcolm Roberts were available “for an open discussion” on reform, “it makes the task difficult if the Government maintains its plan to suspend the Better Off Overall Test for a further two years”.

“Therefore we strongly encourage you” to remove the relevant parts of the legislation “to continue the good faith negotiations and consideration of the Bill by One Nation Senators”.

Hanson wrote that One Nation had long supported improved and simplified IR legislation for small businesses and their more and 2.2 million workers.

But the bill in its current form was “inequitable and severely undermines the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) that protects workers from the small number of deceitful employers,” she said.

Under the current BOOT, workers must be better off overall under a proposed enterprise agreement compared with the relevant modern award.

The legislation, now before parliament, proposes the BOOT would not have to be met if the Fair Work Commission decided this was appropriate given the impact of COVID on the enterprise.

The commission would also need to take into account the views of the workers, expressed in a vote.

The provision for suspending the BOOT would only apply to agreements made in the next two years, although the agreements themselves could run much longer.

The government has made it clear it will ditch its plan for the BOOT change if that is necessary to get its legislation through and has given every indication it expects to have to do so.

The Hanson demand may bring the argument about the BOOT to an early head, because there is also disquiet about the change among the other crossbenchers.

– ref. Pauline Hanson puts her foot down over government’s changes to the BOOT – https://theconversation.com/pauline-hanson-puts-her-foot-down-over-governments-changes-to-the-boot-155326

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Maley, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Australian National University

Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped in a minister’s office at Parliament House is just one of a number of recent stories of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct that have exposed the dark side of working conditions for some political staffers.

As a researcher of political staff in Australia, I am trying to understand why this behaviour exists within the working culture of parliament, why it is reaching the public eye now and what needs to be done about it.

Over the summer, I interviewed eight former political staffers about their experiences working in ministers’ offices and electorate offices — both at the federal and state level.

They described instances of bullying and sexual harassment by other staffers and their bosses. It is hard to know how common this is, as the world they inhabit is secretive. The identities of staffers are not publicly known, let alone how many make complaints and how they are dealt with.

Read more: Is Canberra having a #metoo moment? It will take more than reports of MPs behaving badly for parliament to change

The culture in Canberra

Work as a political staffer can be exciting and rewarding, as well as combative and competitive. Work is dominated by the needs and demands of a boss who is under constant scrutiny.

In her 2016 book, former staffer Niki Savva described her job this way:

The hours were long, the demands never-ending, the stress phenomenal and the fear of stuffing up overwhelming.

But along with the stress comes the prestige and thrill of being close to power and having an impact on public decisions. Most staffers describe their jobs as a privilege. It is their “dream job”.

Many staffers are young and female. I researched a group of federal political advisers working from 2010-17 and found almost 50% of them were recruited in their 20s. Over 75% were recruited before they turned 40.

Over 90% of administrative staff in the study were female, and 40% of the political and policy advisers were women.

Read more: Why a code of conduct may not be enough to change the boys’ club culture in the Liberal Party

The combination of long hours, being away from home and the constant presence of alcohol can be diabolical, creating risks for staffers.

Some described to me a hard-drinking culture, in which bar hopping was seen as a way to wind down and deal with stressful days. One staffer said she kept drinking on some nights to ensure her boss stayed out of trouble, helping him get into a taxi at the end of the night.

Another former staffer claimed the MP he worked for would begin drinking mid-afternoon on most days and when drunk, staff would have to deal with unwanted sexual advances. Repeatedly.

They didn’t complain out of loyalty. They just dealt with it. For years.

Few options for staffers to report misconduct

When they experience sexual harassment or bullying at work, political staffers face high stakes decisions about making complaints.

If they complain, they could lose their jobs or their career prospects. Their jobs are precarious and can be terminated at any time.

One legal reason for termination, according to the federal Department of Finance, can be if the senator or member “has lost trust or confidence in the employee”.

Read more: Thirty-five voices, one movement: a new book examines #MeToo in Australia

While staffers are covered by the Fair Work Act, invoking the workplace protections that exist for them is perilous. If they make a formal complaint, they could be sacked or seen as a troublemaker, jeopardising future work for their parties.

Loyalty to the politician and party is a paramount condition of their employment. As a result, the instinct for many is to protect the party. But tolerating poor conduct can mean bad behaviour becomes normalised.

Staffers are also not confident about raising these issues through party organisations. Those I interviewed said they believe the party’s priority is always its reputation, the likelihood of MPs being re-elected and factional power plays — leaders seeking to protect people with whom they are aligned. The well-being of staff is seen as collateral damage.

Accountability is lacking

Some of the people accused of misconduct are political staff, whose behaviour is governed by a code of conduct.

But we never hear about breaches of the code because it is policed internally by senior figures in the government, the members of the shadowy Government Staffing Committee.

When Labor was in government from 2007-13, it provided the dates on which the committee met and the number of investigations it conducted, but nothing about the nature of those investigations.

Since coming to power in 2013, the Coalition government has refused to provide any details about the work of the committee.

According to the ex-staffers I’ve interviewed, allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct are not new. Such behaviour has been going on for years. The same inequalities of power have long existed.

Why we are hearing about them now might be because the #MeToo movement has emboldened people to speak out. Like Brittany Higgins, the people who spoke to me were fuelled by anger that no one was held accountable for what happened to them and a desire to bring about change.

While these cases might be rare, something clearly needs to be done. Prime Minister Scott Morrison reacted to questions about Higgins’ allegation by saying the case was “deeply distressing” and the government takes “all matters of workplace safety very, very seriously.”

But it is leadership from the top that is needed to change a culture that enables and tolerates poor conduct.

We need independent mechanisms for handling complaints, job protections for staff who speak up and a front-foot commitment to maintaining a safe workplace, which means investigating and disciplining members of parliament and staffers when serious allegations are made.

This can only come from the prime minister himself and other party leaders at the top.

– ref. Why political staffers are vulnerable to sexual misconduct — and little is done to stop it – https://theconversation.com/why-political-staffers-are-vulnerable-to-sexual-misconduct-and-little-is-done-to-stop-it-155300

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Newton Cain, Adjunct Associate Professor, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

It has been a bruising couple of weeks for the Pacific Islands Forum after five Micronesian countries announced they were leaving the region’s key intergovernmental body. But rumours of its demise have been somewhat exaggerated.

We may also look back at February 2021 as a turning point in Pacific regionalism , or the processes that foster cooperation and solidarity among Pacific island countries.

With increased attention on the forum and how it works, this could prompt change for the better.

What is the Pacific Islands Forum?

The Pacific Islands Forum has 18 members, including Australia and New Zealand.

Founded in 1971, it was established by Pacific leaders who were denied a space to talk politics by the colonial powers in what was then the South Pacific Commission (now the Pacific Community).

The forum is where leaders meet as equals to address the biggest issues affecting individual nations and the Pacific as a whole, such as the response to COVID-19 and climate change.

In 2018, the leaders signed the Boe Declaration, which established climate change as the most important threat to the security of the region.

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands was conducted with the backing of the forum. The collective political will of its membership also delivered the Treaty of Rarotonga, making the Pacific a nuclear-free zone.

The Pacific Islands Forum is run by a secretariat based in Suva, headed up by a secretary-general. Since 2014, that position has been held by Papua New Guinea’s Dame Meg Taylor.

Determining her successor is the spark that led to the current conflict.

What caused the split?

Normally the secretary-general position is determined by informal exchanges and possibly some horsetrading, with focus on consensus.

But because of COVID-19, this was all reduced to a Zoom meeting. A marathon session, involving two rounds of confidential voting, was used to decide the new secretary-general.

After this, former Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna narrowly beat diplomat Gerald Zackios of Marshall Islands by nine votes to eight (New Caledonia was unable to take part thanks to the government having resigned a few days earlier).

This triggered a rapid and explosive response, with the Micronesian grouping – Palau, Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, and Nauru — announcing they will quit the forum.

This should not have come as a surprise. Ahead of the meeting, the Micronesian leaders had stated that under the terms of a “gentlemen’s agreement” the position of secretary-general should rotate among the sub-regions, and this was their turn.

Not only that, they had clearly warned if they did not get their way, they would see no value in staying with the forum.

Transform Aqorau, a legal adviser to Marshall Islands, says the rest of the region may have underestimated Micronesia’s resolve here and as a result, the forum now has a “totally unprecedented situation” to deal with.

This is not the first time regional cooperative action has been tested, but it is probably the most serious existential threat yet to the Forum, and a major test for our leaders.

What happens now?

All is not lost. The Micronesian leadership has left the door ajar as each country will pursue its own exit strategy according to their national processes. This means that each of the five can pursue their own path and have the option to change position if they see fit.

Importantly, the forum agreement sets out 12 months from when an intention to leave is announced to when it actually takes effect.

It is clear the forum wants all members to stay inside the tent. And work is already underway to ensure communication remains open.

As forum chair, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano, said last week,

The Forum Family will not be complete without its Micronesian brothers and sisters […] For the sake of our Pacific people, we should remain open to all opportunities for talanoa or dialogue as has always been the Pacific Way.

We can expect a lot of conversations and use of experts and advisers to seek a way forward over the coming weeks and months.

There is no doubt this puts an added wrinkle in the geopolitical fabric of the region.

Read more: How might coronavirus change Australia’s ‘Pacific Step-up’?

It also creates added hurdles for members of the forum (including Australia and New Zealand) and other partners (such as China, the United States, and the United Kingdom) who are seeking to increase their influence and range of Pacific relationships.

And it places an additional burden on the forum ahead of the expected meeting in August, where critical issues such as the regional position for COP 26 (the United Nations climate change conference) and the Blue Pacific 2050 strategy (the region’s shared priorities) need to be front of mind.

What does this mean for Australia?

The Pacific Islands Forum is too easily written off as a “talkfest” with colourful shirts.

But when it comes to the security of our region, there is much to be gained by acting collectively. For that, political debate and accommodation is required. And it is through the forum that these things happen.

Australia’s membership of the forum gives it privileged access to the leaders of the near neighbourhood. But this has not always been valued as highly as it should have been. In the region, there continues to be a healthy degree of scepticism about just how committed Australia is to the region.

Read more: Pacific Island nations will no longer stand for Australia’s inaction on climate change

This situation now requires Australia to work with other nations, not on its own.

Australia therefore needs to act with humility and listen to those with more knowledge about regional and sub-regional dynamics. Across the region there are people whose experience, credibility, and “mana” qualify them to take delicate negotiations forward. Some of them are leaders and ministers and others are not.

This is an opportunity for some creative diplomacy.

A turning point?

The forum leaders have already asked the secretariat to review the secretary-general appointment/selection process.

This may well be a starting point for some bigger, deeper conversations about the purpose and objectives of the Pacific Islands Forum and regional cooperation, and how they can be better articulated for the benefit of Pacific peoples.

Let’s hope that with some commitment and energy, the forum actually becomes stronger as a result of these latest ructions.

– ref. With five countries set to quit, is it curtains for the Pacific Islands Forum? – https://theconversation.com/with-five-countries-set-to-quit-is-it-curtains-for-the-pacific-islands-forum-155133

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Quigley, Associate Professor of Earthquake Science, University of Melbourne

A 7.1 magnitude earthquake was recorded off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan on Saturday night, injuring around 100 people, closing roads and trains, and leaving almost a million people without electricity overnight.

It came almost 10 years after the nearby Tohoku quake of March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that caused a catastrophic tsunami and resulted in thousands of deaths and a nuclear reactor meltdown.

In the hours after Saturday’s quake, there were several aftershocks up to magnitude 5, and officials warned there could be more to come.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake itself was an aftershock of the 2011 event. That might seem odd, but aftershocks of a major earthquake can persist for years and even decades.

How do you know if it’s an aftershock?

The earthquake occurred in what’s a called a “subduction zone”, where the Pacific tectonic plate slides under the plate on which northern Japan sits at a rate of 7 to 10 cm per year. It’s an area where there are a lot of earthquakes. It was a structurally simple earthquake: what’s called a “thrust” or “reverse slip” quake, in which rock above the fault moves up and over the rock below the fault.

In areas with low seismic activity, we can recognise aftershock patterns for years and decades after a major quake. The Christchurch earthquake of 2016, for example, was an aftershock of the 2010 quake. Some scientists think aftershock sequences in regions like the eastern USA and Australia may persist for centuries.

In these seismically quiet places, it’s relatively easier to spot aftershocks. The main hallmark is that the rate of quakes in an area is higher after a major quake than it was before. When the rate of quakes has dropped back to what it was originally, we say the aftershocks have stopped.

However, in places like Japan with high seismic activity, it can be hard to say whether one earthquake is an aftershock of another.

On one hand, the rates of aftershocks reduced to pre-2011 rates within about 3 years of the Tohoku earthquake and thus the sequence may have concluded.

On the other hand, rates of seismic activity were continuing to decrease in a fashion consistent with an ongoing aftershock sequence. And Saturday’s earthquake appears to have occurred in an area that generated fewer immediate aftershocks following the 2011 event, suggesting this earthquake could have occurred as rupture of a remaining “sticky part” of the 2011 fault that generated the Tohoku earthquake.

Read more: Underground sounds: why we should listen to earthquakes

So was this an aftershock?

It’s certainly plausible that Saturday’s quake was an aftershock.

The 2011 quake was enormous — the largest ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth-largest worldwide since modern record-keeping began around 1900. It released around 1,000 times as much energy as Saturday’s earthquake, and created a rupture more than 500 km long with 10s of meters of slip. But the slip on the fault was not uniform and seismic activity continued in some areas that did not fail entirely in that earthquake.

Given all this, it’s almost certain there will be some relationship between the two quakes.

What’s more, there have been relatively few aftershocks of the 2011 quake close to where this one happened. This suggests it might have been a “balancing out” of stresses.

On the other hand, there have been several magnitude 7 quakes over the past century within 100 kilometres or so of this one, so it’s hardly out of the ordinary.

A definite answer on whether this was an aftershock or not will require detailed analysis of the quake and others in the region.

What we can learn from this

A quake like this one can be a valuable reminder of how important it is to learn the lessons of a disaster.

The earthquake generated very strong shaking in areas of Japan that were severely affected by the 2011 earthquake shaking and tsunami. Effects such as liquefaction are likely to have occurred again.

People sometimes think a big quake relieves stress built up in Earth’s crust and you can relax afterwards. In reality, it’s the opposite. When you have a big quake, there’s a higher probability you’ll have more to come. Subsequent earthquakes, whether they adhere to statistical definitions of aftershocks or not, can induce recurrent hazards that cause more damage to buildings and infrastructure and present risks to human life.

After a disaster, it is critical to act to reduce future exposure and vulnerability to future disasters through actions such as more considered land-use planning informed in part by better maps of seismic hazards, enhancing coastal protection through engineering of sea-walls and breakwaters and using vegetation, and making sure that warning and evacuation protocols are efficient and effective.

Japan is a world leader in many of these aspects, and the lessons learned from Tohoku are likely to have generated outcomes that minimised some of the loss and damage that could have otherwise occurred from Saturday’s earthquake.

Read more: Japan’s latest tsunami reaction shows lessons learned from previous disasters

– ref. The Fukushima quake may be an echo of the 2011 disaster — and a warning for the future – https://theconversation.com/the-fukushima-quake-may-be-an-echo-of-the-2011-disaster-and-a-warning-for-the-future-155293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Agathe Lise-Pronovost, McKenzie Research Fellow in Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

About 41,000 years ago, something remarkable happened: Earth’s magnetic field flipped and, for a temporary period, magnetic north was south and magnetic south was north.

Palaeomagnetists refer to this as a geomagnetic excursion. This event, which is different to a complete magnetic pole reversal, occurs irregularly through time and reflects the dynamics of Earth’s molten outer core.

The strength of Earth’s magnetic field would have almost vanished during the event, called the Laschamp excursion, which lasted a few thousand years.

Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield against high-energy particles from the Sun and outside the solar system. Without it the planet would be bombarded by these charged particles.

We don’t know when the next geomagnetic excursion will happen. But if it happened today, it would be crippling.

Satellites and navigation apps would be rendered useless — and power distribution systems would be disrupted at a cost of between US$7 billion and US$48 billion each day in the United States alone.

Obviously, satellites and electric grids didn’t exist 41,000 years ago. But the Laschamp excursion — named after the lava flows in France where it was first recognised — still left its mark.

We recently detected its signature in Australia for the first time, in a 5.5 metre-long sediment core taken from the bottom of Lake Selina, Tasmania.

Within these grains lay 270,000 years of history, which we unpack in our paper published in the journal Quaternary Geochronology.

Read more: Explainer: what happens when magnetic north and true north align?

How sediment can record Earth’s magnetic field

Rock and soil can naturally contain magnetic particles, such as the iron mineral magnetite. These magnetic particles are like tiny compass needles aligned with Earth’s magnetic field.

They can be carried from the landscape into lakes through rainfall and wind. They eventually accumulate on the lake’s bottom, becoming buried and locking in place. They effectively become a fossil record of Earth’s magnetic field.

Scientists can then drill into lake beds and use a device called a magnetometer to recover the information held by the lake sediment. The deeper we drill, the further back in time we go.

In 2014 my colleagues and I travelled to Lake Selina in Tasmania with the goal of extracting the area’s climate, vegetation and “paleomagnetic” record, which is the record of Earth’s magnetic field stored in rocks, sediment and other materials.

Led by University of Melbourne Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher, we drilled into the lake floor from a makeshift floating platform rigged to two inflatable rafts.

The first Australian evidence of Laschamp

Our dating of the core revealed that the biggest shift in magnetic pole positions and the lowest magnetic field intensity at Lake Selina both occurred during the Laschamp excursion.

But for a core that spanned several glacial periods, no single dating method could be trusted to precisely determine its age. So we employed numerous scientific techniques including radiocarbon dating and beryllium isotope analysis.

The latter involves tracking the presence of an isotope called beryllium-10. This is formed when high-energy cosmic particles bombard Earth, colliding with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere.

Read more: New evidence for a human magnetic sense that lets your brain detect the Earth’s magnetic field

Since a weaker magnetic field leads to more of these charged particles bombarding Earth, we expected to find more beryllium-10 in sediment containing magnetic particles “locked-in” during the Laschamp excursion. Our findings confirmed this.

The interaction between charged cosmic particles and air particles in Earth’s atmosphere is also what creates auroras. Several generations of people would have witnessed a plethora of spectacular auroras during the Laschamp excursion.

Building on work from the 1980s

Only two other lakes in Australia — Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham in Queensland — have provided a “full-vector” record, wherein both the past directions and past intensity of the magnetic field are obtained from the same core.

But at 14,000 years old, the records from these lakes are much younger than the Laschamp excursion. Four decades later, our work at Lake Selina with modern techniques has revealed the exciting potential for similar research at other Australian lakes.

Currently, Australia is considered a paleomagnetic “blind spot”.

More data from lake sediments, archaeological artefacts, lava flows and mineral cave formations, including stalagmites and stalactites, could greatly improve our understanding of Earth’s magnetic field.

With this knowledge, we may one day potentially be able to predict the next geomagnetic excursion, before our phones stop working and the birds overhead veer off-course and crash into windows.

Our dating of the Lake Selina core is just the start. We’re sure there are more secrets embedded beneath, waiting to be found. And so we continue our search.

This work was carried out in collaboration with La Trobe University, the Australian National University, The University of Wollongong, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the European Centre for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE).

– ref. We found the first Australian evidence of a major shift in Earth’s magnetic poles. It may help us predict the next – https://theconversation.com/we-found-the-first-australian-evidence-of-a-major-shift-in-earths-magnetic-poles-it-may-help-us-predict-the-next-155040

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury

New Zealand’s latest community cases, the first to be infected with the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19, have a plausible link to the border through one person’s workplace at LSG Sky Chefs, a business that deals with laundry and catering from international flights.

But it is not a definitive link. Indeed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced this morning that genome sequencing was not able to link the new infections to any cases we have seen recently in returned travellers.

Worryingly, this leaves the possibility of a more widespread community outbreak.

Even if a connection to the workplace can eventually be established, it may not be a direct human-to-human link. The LSG Sky Chefs worker is not thought to have had face-to-face contact with air crew or international travellers.

This means there may well be other cases in the chain of transmission between the border and the worker, and these cases could have sparked additional community transmission chains.

This makes the situation potentially more dangerous than the recent cases associated with the Pullman hotel managed isolation facility, which had a clear and direct link to the border.

Read more: It’s still too soon for NZ to relax COVID-19 border restrictions for travellers from low-risk countries

More contagious variant

Auckland returned to level 3 lockdown conditions at midnight on Sunday following the announcement of the three new cases. The rest of the country moved to alert level 2, with both restrictions in place until at least Wednesday this week.

Genome sequencing has revealed the new community cases have the more infectious B.1.1.7 lineage. This variant (also known as VOC-202012/01) was first identified in the UK late last year. Since then it has rapidly become dominant across England.

It has also sparked outbreaks that have led to short, sharp restrictions in the Australian states of Queensland, Western Australia, and most recently Victoria.

Read more: Yes, another lockdown in Victoria hurts. But it might be our only way to avert a third wave

The UK has one of the best COVID-19 genomic surveillance systems and this has allowed scientists to track the spread of B.1.1.7. Multiple lines of evidence now point to an increase in the reproductive number of the virus.

This number, often called R0, is the average number of people each infected person will go on to infect. Researchers in the UK recently estimated R0 to be 43-82% higher for B.1.1.7 than for previous variants.

This is why moving Auckland to alert level 3 was the right thing to do. Given the highly infectious nature of the B.1.1.7 variant, and the chance these infections may have come from a source other than the family member’s workplace, there may be another cluster of cases out there that we don’t know about yet.

We know that some family members travelled to New Plymouth, in the Taranaki region, during the Waitangi weekend. There is a risk they passed the virus on to others, but there is also a reasonable chance this was before their infectious period.

At this point, it would seem unnecessary to place the Taranaki region under stricter lockdown conditions. We will know more later in the week, once results are in from tests of people who visited locations of interest in Taranaki.

Short lockdown or bigger outbreak

There are two main questions that need to be answered before we can consider relaxing alert levels for Auckland and the rest of the country. Firstly, we need to find out whether any of the three known cases passed the virus on to others in the community.

Anyone who lives in Auckland or Taranaki, or has travelled through Auckland or Taranaki in the last week should check the Ministry of Health website to see if they were at any of the locations of interest at the times listed.

If so, exposure to the virus is possible and anyone should follow the instructions on the website. If all those who may have been exposed can be identified quickly, the government will feel more confident about relaxing alert levels in the next few days.

But secondly, we also need to know if there are other chains of transmission stemming from cases in between the border and the family. Testing of close and “casual plus” contacts of the three cases will help answer this over the coming days. Testing of people connected with the LSG Sky Chefs workplace and Papatoetoe High School will be particularly important.

Finally, if there are cases that were infected prior to the three cases announced on Sunday, the virus could have been spreading in the community undetected for several weeks. Modelling shows that if there are additional cases upstream of the LSG Sky Chefs worker, the outbreak may already have infected more than 50 people.

But if we can rule this out by establishing a direct link to the source of infection, the outbreak is likely to be much smaller.

If we find significant community transmission, we need to be prepared for alert level 3 restrictions to last several weeks. Because we are dealing with a more transmissible variant, it is even possible we might need to move to alert level 4 to contain and eliminate the outbreak.

– ref. Close contact test results will be crucial to whether Auckland’s level 3 lockdown is extended beyond three days – https://theconversation.com/close-contact-test-results-will-be-crucial-to-whether-aucklands-level-3-lockdown-is-extended-beyond-three-days-155289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Southerton, Postdoctoral Fellow, Vitalities Lab, UNSW

In countries like Australia where infection rates remain relatively low, contact tracing is a crucial defence in our fight against COVID-19.

We’ve seen this recently in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, and now we’re seeing it in Melbourne as Victorian health authorities battle to contain the Holiday Inn outbreak.

The media can play an important role in sharing official information about new cases, potential exposure sites, and who needs to get tested and isolate.

But it’s important to distinguish between informing and shaming when it comes to sharing details of where people who have tested positive have been.

Read more: What can you expect if you get a call from a COVID contact tracer?

It’s about the language

When the daily itineraries of positive cases are picked apart by journalists or on social media, it’s tempting to join in the fun. This could be driven by fear. It’s scary to think we could have been infected on a trip to the supermarket.

But what can seem like a harmless opportunity to vent or make a joke represents a kind of public shaming, and can actually cause harm.

In a recent case in which a Victorian hotel quarantine worker tested positive, Twitter users were quick to mock not only how many places the worker had visited, but also what the venues said about them.

How the media places blame and responsibility within a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic shapes how people make sense of these significant events. While an article listing venues may seem harmless (and indeed helpful), the kind of language reporters use can encourage readers to make assumptions about the infected person.

In one widely criticised recent article, The Age described a COVID-positive hotel quarantine worker’s “busy itinerary” and specifically noted they visited “two different Kmarts (yes, two)”. The tone here may make us feel as though this worker was reckless or selfish, despite the fact their “jam-packed weekend” was perfectly within COVID-19 guidelines.

Articles from The Daily Mail described a Brisbane hotel cleaner “roaming” around the city before testing positive and a COVID-positive person in Melbourne who “wandered shops for hours and even had a massage”. This language paints people who unknowingly go about their everyday lives, before testing positive, as foolish and self-centred.

Fear-driven headlines often draw a connection between the infected person and the hundreds or thousands of people who subsequently have to isolate. It’s as if that individual is personally to blame.

Read more: Queensland’s coronavirus controversy: past pandemics show us public shaming could harm public health

What are the consequences?

We know from research on previous pandemics that stigma and shame can discourage people from getting tested, or cooperating with contact tracing.

Recent studies on people who had COVID-19 have found many felt stigmatised, and particularly felt shame at the prospect of infecting others with the virus.

When people infected with COVID are ridiculed or made an example of in the media and on social media, everyone suffers. People may be reluctant to get tested and subsequently to cooperate with contact tracers if they think their every movement is going to be subject to scrutiny and ridicule.

It’s important to note that many people identified in these news articles are frontline workers — such as hotel quarantine staff — with bills to pay and who have little choice but to put themselves at risk. The entire quarantine system relies on these workers, and this public shaming only makes an already tough job much harder.

Is there a better way?

As the virus keeps popping up in Australia, the reality is we are all at risk. We could be exposed the next time we dine at a cafe, do a fitness class, stop by Dan Murphy’s, or go to work.

But public shaming of people who test positive causes real harm. The media can reduce the judgement heaped on positive cases by:

• focusing on venues and key information rather than describing the person

• being careful about judgemental language. Even if it seems neutral, remember emotions are running high

• emphasising a call to action: what do people need to do to protect themselves and to comply with public health advice? For example, media coverage could remind people where and when a face mask is required.

The public can also help by focusing on the relevant facts and their own actions. Remember, this is a stressful time for everyone. We are all working towards the same goal.

Read more: Why some people don’t want to take a COVID-19 test

– ref. 10am brunch, 1pm Kmart: when the media pokes fun at someone’s lifestyle, it’s harder for the next person to get COVID tested – https://theconversation.com/10am-brunch-1pm-kmart-when-the-media-pokes-fun-at-someones-lifestyle-its-harder-for-the-next-person-to-get-covid-tested-155141

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Leuzinger, Professor, Auckland University of Technology

Plants use their leaves to make food from the sun’s energy and carbon dioxide. With very few exceptions of parasitic plants, no tree is known to grow without green foliage — or to be more precise, no tree can start life without leaves or some sort of green tissue containing chlorophyll.

But some may end up as “zombie trees” long after they lose all leaves and large parts of their trunk, either to disease or the chainsaw.

Such undead tree stumps have been observed for almost 200 years, but the evolutionary and physiological processes leading to their existence remain a mystery. One reason is because they are rare. Another is because whatever happens on their journey from feeding themselves to being fed happens out of sight — likely below ground.

American forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has shown that trees send each other signals through a network of fungi buried among their roots. This underground communication includes warning signals about environmental change and the transfer of nutrients to neighbouring trees before they die.

We suggest this supply can continue beyond the apparent death of an individual tree. By measuring water flow in the stem of a living kauri (Agathis australis) stump and its neighbouring trees, we show underground connections are indeed likely responsible for the survival of the stump.

A living tree stump is clearly a biological oddity, and our key question is why such root grafts form.

Who profits?

It is unlikely a tree that has lost its foliage (through windthrow, disease, or when it is felled) subsequently knocks on its neighbours door (or, more accurately, roots) to ask for carbohydrates. Instead, we must assume that these root connections had been in place earlier, while the stump was still a normal tree.

If that is the case, we can assume root grafting to be the rule rather than the exception, at least in species in which living stumps have been observed. But what are the evolutionary advantages? And why are the connections maintained when a leafless stump is no longer actively contributing resources?

The short answer to these questions is we don’t know. Root grafting, a phenomenon well known to foresters and gardeners, has barely been studied on a physiological basis. Much remains speculation.

Read more: Climate change: having the right combination of tree ‘personalities’ could make forests more resilient

A few evolutionary advantages for root grafting have been suggested, including increased resistance to windthrow, kin selection (I will help you out if you are related to me), and increased access to water and nutrients coupled with the ability to shift those resources among trees.

The former two are more easily explained because all graft members benefit. But the latter is more difficult to understand.

Forests as superorganisms

If forests feature interconnected root networks where water, carbon and nutrients are exchanged, this would be equivalent to power, water and gas grids supplying a city.

But what mechanisms control who gives and who takes? There is evidence that shaded trees are supported by non-shaded trees and the fact that stumps (pensioners) are still supplied with resources gives rise to the much bigger idea that forests act and survive as a whole — much like a single bee or ant has no chance to survive without being part of its colony.

Our discovery of the tight hydraulic coupling through root grafts suggests exactly that: a communal physiology among connected trees. This is a game changer for our general understanding of forest functioning. It shifts our perspective towards forest ecosystems as superorganisms.

Read more: Entire hillsides of trees turned brown this summer. Is it the start of ecosystem collapse?

But with all the advantages this may bring for the superorganism forest, root connections obviously imply a lack of social distancing. As with COVID-19, this makes it easy for pathogens to spread, especially in cases where the pathogen penetrates the vascular tissue, a tree’s main transport route for water and carbohydrates.

Well into the 21st century, some great mysteries remain about how forests function. Research is particularly timely and relevant, given the rise in climate-induced forest dieback events due to more frequent and severe droughts, increased vulnerability to pathogens and exposure to pests that come with warmer temperatures.

– ref. The mysterious existence of a leafless kauri stump, kept alive by its forest neighbours – https://theconversation.com/the-mysterious-existence-of-a-leafless-kauri-stump-kept-alive-by-its-forest-neighbours-121804

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise D’Arcens, Professor of English, Macquarie University

In 1939, a 7th century Saxon ship was uncovered at Sutton Hoo, the Suffolk property of Edith Pretty. The discovery of this ship would transform modern understandings of early medieval England, shedding light on the sophistication of its funerary practices, its accomplished artistry and craftsmanship, and its wide-ranging connections across Europe and beyond.

The new Netflix film The Dig dramatises the uncovering of the stunning find. Based on John Preston’s 2007 historical novel and directed by Australian Simon Stone, the film follows Edith (Carey Mulligan) who, pursuing her intuition about some large mounds on her property, engages Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to excavate them.

But while telling a fascinating story of archaeology, The Dig also reflects a more insular aspect of Britain’s recent zeitgeist, nostalgically appealing to an idea of continuity with a deep past.

Appearing at a time of increased hostility toward Britain’s minority populations and toward Europe as a perceived threat to British sovereignty, The Dig can be seen as a Brexit film: its romanticising of an imagined continuity between the Anglo-Saxons and modern British people does not speak to the complexity of Britain today.

For love or money

The Dig pits Basil, the untrained excavator from farming stock, against the arrogant professionals of Britain’s cultural institutions.

Over the last quarter century, medieval scholarship has increasingly paid tribute to amateur scholars working especially in the 19th century, whose vital contributions were sidelined as the discipline professionalised.

Played with quiet magnetism by Fiennes, Basil is the epitome of an amateur: one whose devotion arises from love. But the Cambridge archaeologist C.W. Phillips (Ken Stott) is determined to wrest both control and credit from Basil, in a face-off highlighting ongoing tensions between Britain’s rural counties and its metropolitan centre.

Suffolk might be where Saxon kings and their priceless grave goods are buried, but Phillips scorns the “ad hoc” excavational efforts of the “provincials”, believing the British Museum is the natural destination for the treasures.

Basil, an in-demand but underpaid jobbing excavator, values his nose ahead of his eyes or hands: “the past speaks” to him not through book knowledge but through the soil.

He makes discoveries due to his intimate acquaintance with the Suffolk soil, knowledge bequeathed from his farming father and grandfather.

The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ myth

The film’s depiction of Basil is deeply attractive, but in the current political climate it warrants closer scrutiny. The Dig reanimates key tropes from the persistent 19th century British and American ideology of Anglo-Saxonism.

After the end of Roman rule, Britain was the destination for groups of Germanic migrants who later became known as the Anglo-Saxons. While they were historical people, their identity has been subject to nationalistic and romanticised constructions.

Read more: Why the idea that the English have a common Anglo-Saxon origin is a myth

By the 19th century, historians, educators, and politicians used the “Anglo-Saxon period” to loosely refer to the period spanning from the first settlement of these Northern Europeans in the 5th century to the Norman conquest in the mid-11th century.

These 19th century commentators used the term “Anglo-Saxon” to invoke a broad conception of the English as a continuation of the Anglo-Saxon race: freedom-loving people whose egalitarian social and political institutions, the argument went, were destroyed by the imposition of the “Norman Yoke”.

The Dig presents Basil as an inheritor of this “freedom-loving” people, defying the authority imposed on him by the professional archaeologists.

The Anglo-Saxon period was also idealised as a time when England was free from nefarious “Romance” continental occupation. This is reflected in Edith and Basil declining to support Ipswich Museum’s excavation of a local Roman villa at Stanton Chair.

Anglo-Saxonism was vital to underwriting white racial supremacy as a mandate for Britain’s imperial power and the expansionist concept of Manifest Destiny, based on the belief that the British and white settlers in the colonies inherited a drive for expansion from their Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

When Edith’s rocket-obsessed son Robert (Archie Barnes) compares Vikings to “space pilots” because they both “explore new lands”, we see the film drawing uncritically on a historical tropes of expansionism — despite the fact the violence of colonialism and occupation is well understood today.

Looking back, not forward

One of the great reckonings in the film comes when Basil’s wife, May (Monica Dolan), urges her disaffected husband to return to the dig. She tells him:

you’ve always said your work isn’t about the past or even the present. It’s for the future, so that the next generations can know where they came from. The line that joins them to their forebears.

This appeal to the idea of genetic continuity is rousing and profound, but also exclusionary and insular. May assumes racial and cultural uniformity in Britain, and shared forebears for all.

But her statement is not just intended to move Basil. She speaks to the film’s 21st century viewers, many of whom would not see an unearthed Saxon as a forebear, and might rightly wonder what “future generations” the film has in mind for Britain.

The Dig is a beautifully made and compelling drama about a game-changing archaeological find. But as cinematic archaeology it looks far more to the past than to the future.

Read more: Ammonite: the remarkable real science of Mary Anning and her fossils

– ref. The Dig’s romanticisation of an Anglo-Saxon past reveals it is a film for post-Brexit UK – https://theconversation.com/the-digs-romanticisation-of-an-anglo-saxon-past-reveals-it-is-a-film-for-post-brexit-uk-154827

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brock Bergseth, Postdoctoral research fellow, James Cook University

There’s a useful concept from psychology that helps explain why good people do things that harm the environment: the false consensus effect. That’s where we overestimate how acceptable and prevalent our own behaviour is in society.

Put simply, if you’re doing something (even if you secretly know you probably shouldn’t), you’re more likely to think plenty of other people do it too. What’s more, you likely overestimate how much other people think that behaviour is broadly OK.

This bias allows people to justify socially unacceptable or illegal behaviours.

Researchers have observed the false consensus effect in drug use, how well nurses follow certain procedures at work, and illegal hunting in Africa.

More recently, conservationists and environmental researchers are beginning to reveal how the false consensus effect contributes to environmental damage.

Read more: The majority of people who see poaching in marine parks say nothing

From illegal fishing to climate change

In previous research, my colleagues and I showed how the false consensus effect supports ongoing poaching (meaning fishing in no-take zones) by recreational fishers on the Great Barrier Reef.

In particular, we found people who admitted to poaching thought it was much more prevalent in society than it really was, and had higher estimates than fishers who complied with the law.

The poachers also believed others viewed poaching as socially acceptable; however, in reality, more than 90% of fishers viewed poaching as both socially and personally unacceptable.

Beyond poaching, the false consensus effect can help explain other behaviours.

One study examined students living on campus who were told not to shower while an emergency water ban was in place. It found those who showered in breach of the rules vastly overestimated how many other students were doing the same thing.

In a different study, researchers surveyed Australians about climate change and asked them what opinions they thought most other people held about the topic. The researchers found:

…opinions about climate change are subject to strong false consensus effects, that people grossly overestimate the numbers of people who reject the existence of climate change in the broader community.

The false consensus effect has also shown up in studies examining support for nuclear energy and offshore wind farms.

Using psychology to understand and address environmental damage

As a growing body of research has shown, humans are shockingly bad at making accurate social judgements about the actual attitudes of others.

This gets even more problematic when we unwittingly project our own internal attitudes and beliefs onto others in an attempt to seek confirmation and reassurance.

Just as concepts from psychology can help explain some forms of environmental damage, so too can psychological concepts help address it. For example, research shows people are more likely to litter in areas where there’s already a lot of trash strewn around; so making sure the ground around a bin is not covered in rubbish may help.

But interventions that work in one culture to encourage environmentally friendly behaviour may not work in a different culture.

In Germany, for example, a campaign aimed at increasing consumption of sustainable seafood actually led to a decline in sustainable choices compared to baseline levels, likely because the messages were seen as manipulative and ended up driving shoppers away from choosing sustainable options.

Campaigns to reduce consumption of shark fin soup, buying pangolin meat or scales, and single-use plastic water bottles aim to counter the idea that these environmentally damaging behaviours are widespread and socially acceptable.

Factual information on how other people think and behave can be very powerful. Energy companies have substantially reduced energy consumption simply by showing people how their electricity use compares to their neighbors and conscientious consumers.

Encouragingly, activating people’s inherent desire for status has also been successful in getting people to “go green to be seen”, or to publicly buy eco-friendly products.

As the research evidence shows, social norms can be a powerful force in encouraging and popularising environmentally friendly behaviours. Perhaps you can do your bit by sharing this article!

Read more: How to deal with the Craig Kelly in your life: a guide to tackling coronavirus contrarians

– ref. ‘Everyone else does it, so I can too’: how the false consensus effect drives environmental damage – https://theconversation.com/everyone-else-does-it-so-i-can-too-how-the-false-consensus-effect-drives-environmental-damage-153305

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgia Cervin, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Western Australia

Within days of serious allegations of physical and psychological abuse in New Zealand gymnastics emerging in late 2020, the sport’s governing body Gymnastics New Zealand commissioned an independent review.

A series of media investigations had earlier painted a picture of widespread harm, including over-training and fat-shaming, predominantly affecting girls. The allegations echoed similar situations around the world.

The eventual report was released last week and Gymnastics New Zealand apologised for the past abuses. However, the report does not contain specific findings, perhaps a result of its broad terms of reference.

Instead, it identifies the main areas where change might happen, including the health, safety and well-being of gymnasts, coaching standards, finances, complaints procedures and organisational structure.

The report recommends change in each of these areas, plus the establishment of a body to monitor implementation of those reforms.

A lack of athlete and children’s voices

Gymnasts and academics have already floated many of the report’s ideas, which would make a positive change in the sport.

On the other hand, academic research contradicts some of the claims within the report. For example, the idea that Eastern bloc coaches “introduced” abusive methods to the sport is inaccurate. There is evidence of abuse in gymnastics in both Eastern and Western countries since the 1970s.

Read more: Girls no more: why elite gymnastics competition for women should start at 18

Fostering a belief that outsiders are responsible for such abuse feeds anti-immigrant stereotypes and deflects the focus from local culpability.

The report also fails to take account of gender. It is mentioned only once, even though the majority of allegations came from females. Moreover, research has shown the sport’s expectations of femininity are a big part of the power imbalances that lead to abuse.

And while the report calls for promoting athlete voices and child-safe policies, the lack of child and athlete voices in the text is striking — particularly as around 90% of gymnasts are under 12.

Only 70 athletes participated in the review, out of a population of 35,000 gymnasts registered with Gymnastics New Zealand (not including former members).

A history of abuse

This is not the first time gymnastics has been at a crossroads. There were scares in 1995 with Joan Ryan’s book Little Girls in Pretty Boxes about abuse in gymnastics and figure skating, an inquiry into Australian gymnastics abuse that same year, and more allegations around the world throughout the 2000s.

The difference now is that we have the social science evidence and human rights frameworks upon which to base our response.

The report, then, must be considered as only one input into a wider program of change — beginning with an acknowledgement that the problems within gymnastics are highly gendered. That is, they disproportionately affect girls and women, and are related to the narrowly defined femininity that gymnastics demands.

Read more: Winning at all costs – how abuse in sport has become normalised

Girls are selected and trained to adopt certain traits — docility, passivity and compliance — that make them easier to control. Coaches enforce these behaviours by using emotionally abusive “training methods”: yelling, insulting, public ridicule, isolation, neglect and physical violence.

A recent investigation in Switzerland found one in two gymnasts had been subjected to treatment that fits accepted definitions of torture. Given that about 90% of gymnasts are under 12 and 79% are female, this amounts to gendered child abuse.

Gender, authority and exploitation

The power differential between coaches and other officials (positioned as adults and experts), and gymnasts (inexpert and children) has allowed abuse to be normalised.

This subordination of female athlete voices doesn’t just happen in the gym. It’s echoed in the reviews taking place around the world. We’re assured sports authorities will listen to the reviewers, so why didn’t they listen when gymnasts first raised concerns?

A United Nations Report from June 2020 identified gender discrimination in sport as a human rights concern:

The discrimination faced by women and girls in competitive and non-competitive sport cannot be divorced from the discrimination they face in society more broadly.

[Countries should] consider taking collective action on behalf of athletes, including with the involvement of sporting bodies, to address the gaps in accountability arising from the practices and policies of sporting bodies.

As a member of the international human rights community, as well as a party to the recent Commonwealth consensus statement on human rights in sport, New Zealand has an obligation to take action. This could begin with gymnastics.

Read more: Nassar’s abuse reflects more than 50 years of men’s power over female athletes

Athletes are the experts

While new policies, education and monitoring will all need to be developed, amplifying athletes’ voices is the first step.

One guide might be the disability sector’s mantra of “nothing about us without us”. Athlete voices have been absent from decision-making for too long. Welfare concerns now plaguing many sports are a symptom of this.

It’s time to recognise athletes as the experts they are. They know their sport better than anyone. Most are amateurs who also need a paying job and have experience in other fields that can contribute to athlete welfare.

National sports organisations need to embed athletes in governance — not just as another party to consult, another toothless committee, but as a mandatory requirement for boards.

Athlete welfare and empowerment strategies need to be designed by or with the athletes themselves or their representatives. People with expertise in human rights, abuse, child protection and gender equity have valuable knowledge to share with the sports community.

Finding a way to fix gymnastics is a real opportunity to create something that will transform all women’s sports in New Zealand. But first we must start listening to the athletes themselves.

– ref. Gymnastics NZ has apologised for past abuses — now it must empower athletes to lead change – https://theconversation.com/gymnastics-nz-has-apologised-for-past-abuses-now-it-must-empower-athletes-to-lead-change-154183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wallace, Associate Professor, 50/50 By 2030 Foundation, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of Canberra

Federal opposition leader Anthony Albanese’s recent six-day tour of Queensland came not a minute too soon for Labor’s prospects in the possible election year of 2021.

The old adage that you can’t win an election without winning Queensland was proven roundly by ex-Labor leader Bill Shorten’s performance in 2019. Albanese knows the party has to pick up at least three or four Queensland seats to have any hope of dislodging the Coalition government.

The smoking ruin of 2019

The scale of Labor’s 2019 Queensland disaster bears close inspection.

With a primary vote of just 26.7%, Labor won only six out of thirty Queensland seats. This was the party’s worst House of Representatives result since the Dismissal election of 1975 when it was left with just one.

Only one Labor senator (newcomer Nita Green) was elected — the party’s worst upper house performance in Queensland since the current Senate voting system was established in 1949.

The Australian Election Study shows the 4.3% swing against Labor in Queensland was almost four times the Australian average. It also gave the Coalition an extra two lower house seats — enough to win the election.

But Queenslanders do vote Labor

Juxtapose this with Queensland Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s third consecutive state election win in 2020 and you can see Labor is not inherently the problem.

A large number of Queenslanders voted against Shorten in 2019 and for Palaszczuk in 2020.

Read more: ‘Three-peat Palaszczuk’: why Queenslanders swung behind Labor in historic election

So Labor can, has and does win resoundingly in the sunshine state. Labor’s job now is to win back the Queenslanders lost in 2019, substantially build on their numbers, and bring in enough seats to underwrite victory.

On five of the last seven occasions Labor won a federal election, it won a majority of seats in Queensland. Today, that means Labor would have to pick up another ten seats to take its current tally of six seats to 16 out of the current 30 lower house seats.

Internal party hopes to pick up at least three or four seats, rather than ten, shows how low is the bar Labor has set itself for the coming poll.

A September poll?

Shorten did not engage Queenslanders much. The question is, can Albanese succeed where Shorten failed? This is especially so with voters in outer-suburban Brisbane, in the suburbs of regional cities, and in the regions generally, who turned so savagely against federal Labor in 2019.

Key will be whether Albanese can convince Queenslanders he will act in their interests, rather than straddle the barbed wire fence Shorten did on resource sector jobs and the environment. On this, Albanese has to bring regional voters with him, while holding onto environmentally-motivated inner-city ones.

Read more: Albanese is running out of time to solve Labor’s climate crisis. He needs a plan that works for two Australias

Albanese knows he cannot win unless he can convince Queenslanders on both jobs and the environment, and his recent frontbench reshuffle was designed with this in mind. Deputy leader Richard Marles, now shadow minister for reconstruction, employment, skills and small business, and Chris Bowen, shadow minister for climate change and energy, will be expected to deliver on the policy and politics of this challenge.

They don’t have a lot of time. The government will likely want to capitalise on the popularity of the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine roll out, and get in ahead of voter unhappiness at the withdrawal of pandemic stimulus benefits, by calling an early election.

With a September 2021 poll widely expected in Canberra, despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s protestations to the contrary, the opposition leader urgently needs Queenslanders to get to know him better and vice versa.

Getting to know you

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for Albanese to go to Queensland over the past year.

Albanese has to flesh himself out. He has to spend a lot of time in Queensland projecting, as the new Labor slogan has it, he’s “on their side”.

In his six-day visit to Queensland, Albanese spruiked Labor’s new industrial relations policy with the discipline necessary for a winning leader. Its focus on the situation of marginal and gig economy workers has potential appeal for one of the kinds of voters Labor needs to connect with, providing Albanese can garner their attention for long enough to hear him.

It will become clear in coming months whether Albanese can do the theatre of politics well enough to cut through with initiatives like this and make inroads for Labor.

Read more: Anthony Albanese’s plan to boost protections for Australians in insecure work

Excellent initiatives in his 2020 budget reply speech on childcare, industry and energy policy disappeared like water into sand. It’s no good having the policies if you can’t communicate them and make them stick in voters’ minds.

The Queensland opportunity

The flipside of Labor’s woeful 2019 result is it would be hard for anyone to do worse at the next poll. Queensland now represents an enormous opportunity. If Albanese can turn it around for Labor there, he can win the next election.

That possibility is greater than many people may realise. It is unusual for a prime minister to campaign hard for a state counterpart — as Morrison did for the Liberal National Party in Queensland last year — only for that state leader to go down in a comprehensive loss.

Read more: How to win an election? Do the substance as well as the theatre of politics

Morrison’s inability to help then Queensland LNP leader Deb Frecklington stop Palaszczuk’s emphatic win shows there are limits to his political cleverness and appeal. After warming to him relative to Shorten in 2019, voters there revealed a new scepticism about Morrison in 2020.

But Albanese has a lot of work to do to convince Queenslanders he is worthy of their vote. The more time he spends there, the better, and his latest trip was a good down-payment on that task.

If his approach works, opinion polls will move in Labor’s favour and the party’s marginal seat-holders around Australia will start to breathe easier.

– ref. Labor’s wicked problem: how to win back Queensland – https://theconversation.com/labors-wicked-problem-how-to-win-back-queensland-154951

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoë Hyde, Epidemiologist, University of Western Australia

In the past fortnight, two vaccine stories made headlines around the world.

Novavax announced spectacular results for its phase 3 trial, while preliminary data suggest the AstraZeneca vaccine is ineffective against the South African variant.

These two vaccines comprise the bulk of Australia’s vaccine portfolio, and the results should prompt an urgent rethink of our vaccination strategy.

Australia won’t reach herd immunity with the current plan.

Australia’s strategy

Australia has secured access to 20 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, 53.8 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, and 51 million doses of the Novavax vaccine. All of these require two doses for maximum effectiveness.

The federal government plans to begin vaccinating groups at high risk with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, then use the AstraZeneca vaccine for the remainder of the population.

The Novavax vaccine may be used at a later date.

But the efficacy of these vaccines is very different

There’s been some confusion over the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, because of a dosing mistake in one of the early trials. But what’s clear is that its efficacy with a standard, two-dose schedule is 62%.

In comparison, the efficacy of Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine is 95%, while interim results suggest the Novavax vaccine has an efficacy of 89%.

These differences matter, because if vaccine efficacy is below a certain level, it’s not possible to achieve herd immunity.

If we don’t achieve herd immunity, Australia could be dealing with outbreaks indefinitely

Herd immunity is the only sustainable, long-term strategy to prevent the virus from spreading throughout the community.

The proportion of the population needing to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity depends on both how contagious a disease is, and how effective the vaccines for it are. It can be calculated by a simple formula, the results of which are shown in the graph below.

The contagiousness of the virus which causes COVID-19, given by its basic reproduction number (R₀), is thought to be around 2.5. That means, on average, a person with COVID-19 will infect 2.5 people. Of course, some people infect nobody, while others infect many more in super-spreading events.

We’d need to vaccinate almost everyone in Australia to achieve herd immunity with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which isn’t feasible.

Some people have medical conditions that prevent vaccination. We also won’t be able to vaccinate children for a while, because vaccines aren’t yet approved for this age group, although trials are underway.

However, we’d perhaps only need to vaccinate 63% of the population with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, or 67% if we used the Novavax vaccine. This is achievable.

Using the planned combination of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine will still require an unfeasibly large proportion of the population to be vaccinated, because children and teenagers make up about one-fifth of Australia’s population.

In practice, we’ll probably need to vaccinate slightly more people than these figures suggest, because vaccines likely protect against symptomatic disease better than they do against any infection. The figures for efficacy quoted above are for symptomatic disease.

But further unpublished results from the ongoing AstraZeneca trials, and data collected during the trial of the Moderna vaccine, suggest efficacy against infection may be reasonably close to that for symptomatic disease.

New variants threaten herd immunity

New viral variants have complicated the picture. They can threaten our ability to achieve herd immunity in two ways. More transmissible variants (with a higher R₀) mean more people will need to be vaccinated.

They can also directly affect vaccine efficacy, which we’ve seen in South Africa.

Preliminary data suggest the AstraZeneca vaccine is unable to prevent mild to moderate disease caused by the South African variant, and the efficacy of the vaccine dropped to 22%.

Read more: UK, South African, Brazilian: a virologist explains each COVID variant and what they mean for the pandemic

South Africa paused the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and will use the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines instead.

The South African variant has also affected the efficacy of the Novavax vaccine, which was reduced to 60%. We don’t yet know how the variant might affect the efficacy of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, but some reduction is likely.

What does this mean for Australia?

Australia is in an incredibly fortunate position, with almost no community transmission. Breaches in the hotel quarantine system are now the major source of outbreaks in Australia.

An increasing proportion of cases in Australian hotel quarantine are infected with variants. At least 18 cases of the South African variant have been detected so far.

Variants of concern are becoming dominant globally. These are what our vaccination strategy must prevent. AstraZeneca’s vaccine won’t protect us against the South African variant, but high-efficacy vaccines like those made by Novavax and Pfizer/BioNTech probably still will.

If Australia rolled out the AstraZeneca vaccine, we’d be starting behind the eight ball, and we’d have to do a second rollout to protect everyone against the South African variant.

But vaccination is going to be a mammoth task. To meet the government’s target of vaccinating all adults by October, Australia will need to vaccinate around 200,000 people per day.

Realistically, we’re only going to get one shot at achieving maximum population coverage, and so it’s critical that we get this right.

Is the AstraZeneca vaccine still useful?

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly, argued the AstraZeneca vaccine is still useful because it can prevent death and severe illness 100% of the time.

In reality, that’s not a claim supported by science, because the AstraZeneca trial lacked statistical power to evaluate this endpoint. In fact, only two severe cases occurred during the trial, including one death (both of which were in the placebo group).

We’d need a much larger trial to understand how well the AstraZeneca vaccine prevents severe disease. This would provide the larger number of events needed to distinguish a significant difference between the placebo and vaccine group.

However, we can expect COVID-19 vaccines to be better at preventing serious outcomes than mild ones, and so the AstraZeneca vaccine might still do quite well against severe disease.

But we don’t yet know what the efficacy will be, and death isn’t the only outcome to consider. Vaccines must also be able to prevent the debilitating condition known as “long COVID”, which is relatively common, even in people who initially had mild COVID-19.

The Office for National Statistics in the UK estimates that 1 in 10 people experience persistent symptoms lasting at least 12 weeks.

The AstraZeneca vaccine will still be very useful for countries battling second waves caused by the original strain of the virus. In this context, the vaccine will save lives.

It’s also very important to note that no safety concerns have been identified with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Australia should go for herd immunity

With no widespread community transmission, Australia can afford to prioritise a long-term herd immunity strategy, rather than focusing on a short-term goal of saving lives.

In addition to expected overseas supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, Australia has the capacity to manufacture the high-efficacy Novavax vaccine domestically.

Unlike the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, the Novavax vaccine can be kept in a refrigerator, making it ideal for use in urban, rural, and remote Australia.

Australia must not squander this opportunity by proceeding with the rollout of a vaccine that’s already been proven ineffective against one of the world’s most concerning variants. Rather, we must use high-efficacy vaccines to build herd immunity, and secure Australia’s long-term future.

– ref. Herd immunity is the end game for the pandemic, but the AstraZeneca vaccine won’t get us there – https://theconversation.com/herd-immunity-is-the-end-game-for-the-pandemic-but-the-astrazeneca-vaccine-wont-get-us-there-155115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Dominey-Howes, Professor of Hazards and Disaster Risk Sciences, University of Sydney

When disaster strikes, not everyone is affected the same way. A growing body of research shows the experiences of sexually and gender diverse people are frequently very different to those of heterosexual people.

Our research in Australia and New Zealand sought to explore and make visible the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people, among other sexual and gender identities.

People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersex or queer can have quite different experiences but are often incorrectly lumped together as one “community”. In fact, there are multiple communities.

For our research, we wanted to know how disasters affected these people and communities, about their experiences with government and other support agencies and what positive experiences they’d had of resilience, coping and adapting.

Read more: You can’t talk about disaster risk reduction without talking about inequality

‘You never know if you will be treated properly and with respect’

It became clear LGBTIQA+ people are differently vulnerable in disasters and their aftermath. Fear, marginalisation, misunderstanding, exclusion and discrimination are all factors to contend with, on top of the other personally and financially devastating impacts of disaster.

Many LGBTIQA+ people do not openly reveal their sexual and gender identities. However, if your home is damaged or you need to evacuate to a public shelter shared with possibly hundreds of other people, your identity can become very obvious.

One person told us:

I wasn’t fully out at this time so I already had to hide things.

In many instances, becoming “visible” when disaster strikes resulted in verbal abuse or worse. One person told us that while videoing flooding, he was accused of being a paedophile.

Accessing support services can be stressful and problematic, with one person telling us:

It is always a bit of a concern outing myself.

Uncertainty can weigh heavily on some, as one person explained:

Discrimination when accessing mainstream services is always an issue – you never know if you will be treated properly and with respect.

Another said:

I would have been concerned my relationship may not have been accepted in mainstream support services.

One person described how

I was concerned that if I needed direct contact assistance that I would have been either judged or misidentified concerning my gender.

If your home is damaged, moving in with parents or other family isn’t always a simple solution, as stories from some people made clear:

I went home and was stuck in the house all week with my family because I can’t drive and there was no public transport […] My family were not aware at the time that I was dating anyone – and it wasn’t something I was going to disclose – so it wasn’t something I could talk about.

I stayed with my cousins, who were quite conservative […] I had to shut off some part of my identity for a little while.

We also found an absence of queer stories from most mainstream media coverage contributed to a narrative that constructed disasters as experienced exclusively by heterosexual families.

Unwelcoming spaces

In evacuation shelters, bathrooms and toilets are usually divided in to “male” and “female” spaces. For some LGBTIQA+ people, being forced into a female/male bathroom space where their bodies become visible to others can be highly traumatic. That’s often due to previous experiences of discrimination, harassment and violence.

For transgendered people — particularly those in a process of transitioning — single-sex, heteronormative public bathrooms can be utterly overwhelming.

Some people spoke of being blamed for disaster. One person said:

There were religious nutters saying the queers had caused the quakes.

In the wake of flooding, one person said:

People were targeting groups of gay people in town as our ‘behaviour’ had brought this upon the community as a whole. So I was told on many occasions.

Emergency responses are sometimes outsourced to third party, faith-based Christian institutions. It is worth noting such organisations have not always been consistently welcoming for LGBTIQA+ people.

More research is needed on the experiences and needs of LGBTIQA+ people (including those of faith) and how faith-based institutions might support LGBTIQA+-inclusive response and recovery.

Pandemics are disasters too

Climate change and environmental degradation has heightened the risk of pandemics. The current COVID-19 pandemic is an example of how pandemics can be experienced differently by many LGBTIQA+ people (especially those who are younger and in precarious work or housing).

The current pandemic forced some LGBTIQA+ people to move to the parental home after losing work. This can force people back into the closet as they try to fit into expectations of unwelcoming families — an incredibly stressful experience.

Resilience and mutual support

Across our research, we also encountered many examples of resilience, coping and adaptation. For example, online communities of support spontaneously emerged after some disasters, allowing people to advertise safe accommodation for others.

Some people spoke of relying on the LGBTIQA+ community for help:

I wasn’t going to leave my place but my LGBT friends (that live 10 houses away) woke me in the middle of the night to inform me both ends of our road had flooded in. We ended up getting my car out, through back yard access and knocking down a fence.

The United Nations states disaster preparedness, response and recovery arrangements and services should be uniformly available to all, but sensitive to the unique needs different members of our community have. As our research makes clear, much work lies ahead if we are to achieve that goal.

Read more: Domestic violence soars after natural disasters. Preventing it needs to be part of the emergency response

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. ‘You never know if you will be treated properly and with respect’: voices of LGBTIQA+ people who lived through disasters – https://theconversation.com/you-never-know-if-you-will-be-treated-properly-and-with-respect-voices-of-lgbtiqa-people-who-lived-through-disasters-153190

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shelley Kinash, Professor of Higher Education, University of Southern Queensland

Throughout the world, COVID-19 health regulations have made the on-campus lecture mostly defunct. And most Australian universities won’t be offering on-campus lectures in 2021.

The Australasian Council on Open, Distance and e-Learning (ACODE) recently published a white paper on lectures, based on survey responses from 43 member universities (91% response rate). About two-thirds indicated they would not be conducting on-campus lectures this year.

University of Southern Queensland (USQ), for example, sent a document to all staff and students announcing on-campus classes, such as tutorials, lab work and small-group seminars, will continue in 2021, with the notable exception of the traditional lecture. At USQ, when didactic content does need to be delivered, it will be done online, in smaller chunks, with student learning activities interspersed.

Read more: Videos won’t kill the uni lecture, but they will improve student learning and their marks

The lecture was ailing before COVID

Now that COVID-19 has forced universities to cease on-campus lectures, many report that they will not return after the pandemic. Only 23% of ACODE-surveyed universities said they would return to full lecturing.

Times Higher Education reported last month that Curtin, Murdoch and Victoria universities believe in-person lectures are a mode of the past.

Some universities started “killing off” lectures long before the pandemic. In 2012, for example, The Conversation reported the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) was tearing down its lecture theatres.

Many new and redesigned tertiary campuses are not including blueprinted lecture theatres. The University of Tasmania, for example, is in the process of creating the Inveresk Precinct with non-traditional teaching and learning spaces.

Read more: 5 tips on how unis can do more to design online learning that works for all students

Why are lecture theatres on the way out?

Mostly this is happening because there are better ways to learn and to prepare for employment. In 2014, UTS explained its rationale for demolishing lecture theatres was not physical, but educational.

For universities, a primary reason for cancelling lectures is to improve pedagogy or teaching methods. In the ACODE survey, only 7% disagreed with this rationale.

Times Higher Education reported that, by 2013, more than 700 studies had all found lectures are an ineffective teaching approach. There is little empirical evidence to prove that lectures are an optimal way to learn or to develop graduate career skills.

Lectures are passive. They seldom get students to do anything, beyond listening and perhaps taking notes. Lectures fail to foster deep learning and student engagement. The purpose of the lecture is called into question.

Australian students have been voting with their feet. They have continually chosen to forgo lectures, preferring content delivered online.

This learning mode particularly appeals to mature-aged students, who are working while studying and have difficulty fitting long lecture blocks into their schedules. And this description fits a high proportion of university students today.

Read more: Lecture recordings mean fewer students are turning up – does it matter?

Are students or employers concerned?

Early in the pandemic (June through September 2020), i-graduate conducted a survey of Australian domestic and international students. Of the 24,000 respondents, 70% were satisfied with how the universities adapted to COVID-19 and 68% with their overall online learning experience.

While students expressed current satisfaction with online lectures (about 70%), only half thought they should remain. Notably, students were not surveyed about their preference for the online recorded long-form lecture versus alternatives.

A recent FutureLearn survey of just over 1,000 American employers asked: “Are you more likely to hire applicants with online education since the pandemic?” While 75% responded yes, 63% said they would need to “rethink” the hiring process.

But how will students learn what they need to know?

The questions within these surveys are asked in a Shakespearean binary: to lecture, or not to lecture. On-campus or online. The reality is not so simple.

Lectures are not the only approach to university education. Furthermore, the choice of on-campus or online learning is now mostly redundant.

All students spend a lot of their time within online “learning management systems”. Even before the pandemic, curriculum without an accompanying website was rare.

The lecture is still the lecture, whether on-campus, or recorded and posted online. The lecture does not teach any better just because it is digital.

Searching for, planning and booking travel is flourishing online (or at least it was during non-pandemic times). Streaming services have radically changed how people watch television. It is time for universities to catch up to other industries and take full advantage of the opportunities of the internet.

Read more: Universities need to train lecturers in online delivery, or they risk students dropping out

It might be time to let the lecture die, now that other modes of learning and interactions (pedagogies) can thrive.

The University of Southern Queensland, for example, is rolling out a suite of alternative teaching approaches. Most of these are available online. Examples include panel discussions, animated explanations, online experimentation, problem-solving demonstration videos and website hunts.

Such approaches are a sign of the nature of educational change brought forward by the pandemic, which was perhaps long overdue in the higher education sector.

– ref. COVID killed the on-campus lecture, but will unis raise it from the dead? – https://theconversation.com/covid-killed-the-on-campus-lecture-but-will-unis-raise-it-from-the-dead-152971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Davies, Professor of Human Geography, University of Western Australia

Internal migration resulted in a net loss of 11,200 people from Australia’s capital cities in the September quarter of 2020, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released this month. At the same time, some regional areas experienced significant growth in house prices as demand for properties increased. So this has raised the questions: are we starting to see an exodus from our cities, and is this related to the COVID-19 pandemic?

To work out what is happening there are a few important things to consider.

In Australia we move a lot

The first thing to keep in mind is that Australia has one of the most internally mobile populations in the world. About 40% of the population change their addresses at least once within a five-year period. However, the level of internal migration within Australia has fallen since the 1990s.

Read more: Australians are moving home less. Why? And does it matter?

The greatest fall has been for long-distance moves between Australia cities and regions, which declined by 25% between 1991 and 2016. Moves between states and territories fell by 16% over this period. An increase or decrease in internal migration from year to year is not unusual.

Putting the numbers into context

While the recent loss of 11,200 people from Australia’s capital cities is the largest on record, it’s not a significant proportion of the population. Australia’s population has grown and so we expect to see the number of internal migrants to grow too.

The net loss of 11,200 people from capital cities is only 0.06% of the total population – 17.2 million – living in these cities. This is comparable to recent years.

While net loss – those arriving less those departing – is interesting, it is also important to consider the actual numbers of people who are moving to or leaving capital cities. The growth in the net loss of population from capital cities in the September quarter was not the result of a city exodus. What happened in 2020 was that fewer people moved into capital cities.

Drilling down further behind the headline data, we find Brisbane, Perth and Darwin all had net population gains. Brisbane has gained residents through internal migration in each quarter since 2014.

The greatest contributor to the recent net quarterly loss of 11,200 was Sydney, with a net loss of 7,782 people. Melbourne was close behind with a net loss of 7,445.

While this might look alarming at first, Sydney and Melbourne are the largest population centres in Australia. And Sydney has recorded a net loss of population through internal migration every quarter for the past two decades. Melbourne recorded net losses until 2012 and then since 2017.

Sydney and Melbourne’s overall population continued to grow over this period due to international migration. Population churn is part of the rhythm of these global cities.

The data also reveal that, on average, regional Australia has been gaining population for many years – decades actually. Moving to regional Australia is not new.

Read more: Meet the new seachangers: now it’s younger Australians moving out of the big cities

The past year’s COVID-19 restrictions closed Australia’s borders to the previously large numbers of international migrants. Without these international migrants moving to capital cities, the long-term trend of people relocating to urban areas around major cities has become more apparent.

Have the capital cities lost their appeal?

Just considering the September 2020 quarter, nearly 42,000 people moved to capital cities. This is comparable to the March and June quarters of 2020.

This inflow is noteworthy. At a time when many capital cities had mobility restrictions related to COVID-19 in place, people were still moving to these cities. Australia’s capital cities have not lost their appeal.

There is a risk in interpreting net migration from capital cities as an indicator of decreasing satisfaction with city lifestyles or a growing desire for rural lifestyles. It masks the considerable variability in the types of moves people are making, where they are going and why.

Read more: It seemed like a good idea in lockdown, but is moving to the country right for you?

Outside of capital cities are a whole range of different community types. They range from expansive city areas such as the Gold Coast and Geelong through to tiny agricultural and fishing hamlets.

The fastest-growing areas outside capital cities are those that offer sophisticated urban settings. They have diverse employment options and high-order social, education and healthcare infrastructure. So when people leave a capital city, more often than not they are moving to a large city.

Will COVID-19 lead to growth in smaller centres?

Australia’s overall population growth has promoted the growth of capital cities and larger regional cities. Some smaller communities, particularly high-amenity coastal towns, have also experienced periods of sustained population growth.

Distributing this growth further inland to smaller towns and cities is both possible and plausible.

A major barrier to population growth in smaller rural communities is the lack of diverse local employment options. For those who have made the transition to working fully or partially online as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, moving further from their workplace more permanently – and perhaps to the country – could be on the cards.

Read more: More urban sprawl while jobs cluster: working from home will reshape the nation

So is there a pandemic-related exodus?

The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting the way we live our lives but, no, there is not an exodus from Australia’s capital cities. For some, pandemic-related disruptions might have heightened their dissatisfaction with where they live. For others, working from home might have provided them with the opportunity to consider alternative living arrangements.

However, right now, given the data we have, it is unlikely that COVID-19 is driving a shift away from capital cities or city lifestyles.

– ref. Has COVID really caused an exodus from our cities? In fact, moving to the regions is nothing new – https://theconversation.com/has-covid-really-caused-an-exodus-from-our-cities-in-fact-moving-to-the-regions-is-nothing-new-154724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Htwe Htwe Thein, Associate professor, Curtin University

The actions of the Myanmar military in arresting members of the government in dawn raids on February 1, the day parliament was set to convene, have been met with shock and dismay both within the country and around the world.

Why would the military stage a coup to depose a democratically-elected government of which it had been part? Why do it just before the government began a second term?

There are several plausible explanations, but one that has not received enough attention is the desire of the military to protect its wealth and business interests in Myanmar.

It should not be underestimated.

For decades the military has amassed wealth by controlling the state bureaucracy and establishing near-monopolies in key sectors.

The reform agenda of the civilian-led National League for Democracy government threatened to weaken – albeit gradually over time – this lucrative system of crony capitalism.

Read more: Myanmar’s military reverts to its old strong-arm behaviour — and the country takes a major step backwards

There is a saying in Myanmar that you “can touch the hair bun on top of my head, but don’t you dare touch the wallet tucked away at my waist”.

The consolidation of civilian rule likely after November 2020’s election threatened previously-untouchable wallets.

Military crony capitalism

Political reforms initiated in 2011 allowed the previously-banned National League for Democracy to contest the 2015 general election and win it in a landslide.

But in the decades leading up to 2011 two military-owned conglomerates, Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holding Ltd (MEHL) used privatisations to grab publicly-owned enterprises at fire-sale prices.

As well, military leaders and associates of military leaders grabbed licenses, land and economic concessions.

Read more: Ethical minefields: the dirty business of doing deals with Myanmar’s military

While there have been important reforms in Myanmar over the past decade, including a stronger role for a private sector and international investors, the military has maintained its economic clout.

Its conglomerates control businesses and investments in sectors ranging from beer, tobacco and consumables to mines, mills, tourism, property development and telecommunications.

Indeed, this has posed a dilemma for many international businesses that have been accused by the United Nations and Amnesty International of failing to respect human rights by engaging businesses controlled by the military.

The threat from civilian government

The first National League for Democracy government (2015-2020) was reluctant to directly or decisively target the interests of the military, although its opening of key sectors to competition and investment acted as counterweight.

It was intent on tackling the country’s deep-grained corruption in government–business relations, but with weak impact on the businesses owned by the military.

However, in November 2018 a National League for Democracy spokesperson pointed to the military domination of key parts of the economy and stated that the government bureaucracy – historically dominated by retired military personnel – was a major stumbling block to progress and would be an important target for reform after the 2020 election.

Read more: Why Myanmar is rising up in collective fury after a military coup – The Conversation Weekly podcast

The civilian-led government began to gradually de-militarise the country. A major achievement was the 2019 transfer of the general administration department to civilian control.

This department, previously in the military-controlled ministry of home affairs, has been depicted as the spine of the government of Myanmar, with the power to appoint government officials across the country.

Many were shocked that the military had been forced to relinquish control. It was a sign of the weakening grip of the military over the government administration and patronage – which had been at the heart of its ability to accumulate and protect its wealth.

Another achievement was a series of changes to the Myanmar Gemstones Law that threatened military-dominated enterprises for whom the danger-ridden jade mining industry had been extraordinarily lucrative.

We do not know exactly what the National League for Democracy was planning next for jade mining or its commitment to meaningful reform, but we can be sure that strengthened civilian oversight would have loomed large as a concern for the military.

International pressure

The military coup intensifies pressures on international businesses to take a stand on the ethical impacts of their interactions with Myanmar, especially for businesses in direct partnerships with the military.

The decision of the multinational Kirin Brewery Company that brews Australia’s Tooheys, XXXX and James Squire beers to exit its partnership with a Myanmar military-owned business is a high-profile sign of the pressures on investors.

International trade sanctions are likely to return if things don’t improve, but many businesses in countries neighbouring Myanmar are unlikely to be swayed.

As civil disobedience gains traction it remains unclear whether the military coup will succeed. What is clear is that the fight for democracy in Myanmar is also a fight against military-dominated crony capitalism.

– ref. Taking care of business: the coup in Myanmar is partly about protecting the economic interests of the military elite – https://theconversation.com/taking-care-of-business-the-coup-in-myanmar-is-partly-about-protecting-the-economic-interests-of-the-military-elite-154727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne

The Members’ Hall of Parliament House is home to the 25 completed portraits of Australia’s former prime ministers. The most recently revealed was of Julia Gillard in 2018, painted by Vincent Fantauzzo, a five-time People’s Choice Award winner at the Archibald Prize.

Indeed, every official prime ministerial portrait has been painted by an Archibald finalist, including some by artists who were awarded the main prize.

This will change with Tony Abbott’s reported decision to appoint the Australian’s editorial cartoonist Johannes Leak to paint his official portrait. Leak does not have any track record of exhibiting works on a large scale, let alone portraits.

Johannes Leak’s heavy-handed cartoons are in the style of his father’s last years, the work undertaken after he suffered serious head injuries after a fall. There is a general consensus that Bill Leak’s later cartoons are markedly inferior to the work he did in his prime.

The website for the Bill Leak Gallery carries the following statement:

Bill Leak’s son Johannes has taken over the family business and is now the daily editorial cartoonist for The Australian, the position held by his father for 23 years.

This is unusual. I cannot think of another Australian political cartoonist who inherited their position. Traditionally our leading cartoonists come from a rigorous and contested culture of freelance drawing, a tradition that goes back to J.F. Archibald’s Bulletin magazine, first published in 1880.

Along with his father’s platform, Leak junior has also taken over the title Australia’s most condemned cartoonist.

Read more: The Australian’s racist Kamala Harris cartoon shows why diversity in newsrooms matters

The cartoonist and the painter

There is of course no contradiction between a cartoonist also being an artist.

Norman Lindsay was the star cartoonist for The Bulletin, pleased at the steady income that gave him time for more serious work.

In the early part of last century, his brother Lionel Lindsay — best known for his etchings and wood engravings — was for many years cartoonist at the Evening News, appointed by the editor Banjo Paterson as well as drawing the popular Chunderloo cartoon series for Cobra boot polish.

In the 21st century, Jon Kudelka, the cartoonist at the Saturday Paper, is also well-known as an exhibiting artist.

Leak senior first exhibited in the Archibald Prize in 1988 with a portrait of fellow cartoonist Patrick Cook, following with a portrait of Don Bradman in 1989 and Malcolm Turnbull in 1994, which won the People’s Choice Award.

Read more: Friday essay: it’s not funny to us – an Aboriginal perspective on political correctness and humour

Bill Leak’s larrikin sensibility combined with his Archibald success is presumably why he was commissioned to paint Bob Hawke’s official portrait for Parliament House. It is a curiously dull grey painting of a colourful character. There is something quite odd about the way the head doesn’t quite fit the body, almost as though there were two different models.

The difference between Bill Leak’s portrait of Hawke and his son’s commission to paint Tony Abbott is Leak senior’s track record as an exhibiting artist.

But is it art?

Fortunately for Johannes Leak, whatever he paints will fit the legal definition of portrait. For this we also have to thank the legacy of J.F. Archibald.

Archibald died a wealthy man. His charitable gifts included a benevolent fund for the relief of distressed journalists and the Archibald Fountain in Sydney’s Hyde Park. But his best known legacy was to the Trustees of the New South Wales National Gallery, providing an endowment to create The Archibald Prize.

For many years when it came to judging the prize, the trustees — more or less evenly divided along the same kind of factional lines usually seen in political parties — took turns in deciding who would be awarded the lucrative honour.

In 1943 this changed. A conservative trustee died and was replaced with Mary Alice Evatt, a modernist artist who happened to be the minister for education’s sister-in-law.

The prize was awarded to William Dobell for his portrait of his friend the artist Joshua Smith. Two artists aligned with the Royal Art Society (and not so secretly supported by the conservative trustees) sued on the grounds it was not a portrait, but a caricature.

The resulting court case provided a great entertainment for Sydney society.

The plaintiffs’ most trenchant witness, the art critic J.S. MacDonald, claimed the portrait was “a pictorial defamation of character” and a “satirical caricature”. Under cross-examination he admitted he had written his critique without seeing the work in question.

As well as giving a verdict in favour of the trustees and the gallery, Justice Roper noted the considerable public interest in the matter, so added for good measure a definition of portraiture yet to be seriously contested:

The word “portrait” … means a pictorial representation of a person, painted by an artist. This definition denotes some degree of likeness is essential and for the purpose of achieving it the inclusion of the face of the subject is desirable and perhaps also essential.

Johannes Leak could paint the silliest, crudest portrait of Tony Abbott and it would still be defined as a portrait. It is, however, more likely he will paint a large acrylic or oil painting on canvas.

My prediction is the subject will be depicted wearing a grey suit and sporting a light blue tie — rather than Abbott’s infamous red budgie-smuggler swimming trunks. It will almost certainly include a face.

– ref. Cartoonist Johannes Leak is not known for his portraits – so why is he being given $40,000 to do Tony Abbott’s? – https://theconversation.com/cartoonist-johannes-leak-is-not-known-for-his-portraits-so-why-is-he-being-given-40-000-to-do-tony-abbotts-155037

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

As JobKeeper enters its final weeks, the government has released the latest Tax Office breakdown of the numbers coming off the program, amid concerns its end in late March will see a rise in unemployment.

With attention currently on Victoria, in a five day lockdown due to a COVID outbreak that started with a hotel quarantine breach, the JobKeeper numbers underline the impact of that state’s long lockdown last year.

In Victoria about 1.1 million workers received JobKeeper in its first phase, which ran from April to September, falling to 626,000 in the second phase, October to December.

This was a reduction of just 44%, substantially less than the declines in every other state and territory.

Elsewhere the falls between the two phases were: NSW, 60%; Queensland, 64%; South Australia, 67%; Western Australia, 70%; Tasmania, 65%; Northern Territory, 69%; and ACT 62%.

The figures included substantial reductions in various regions with a reliance on tourism, despite the problems faced by that industry.

Some 18% of the Victorian pre-COVID workforce was on JobKeeper in the second phase, substantially above the proportions in other states and territories.

Nationally, 1.54 million individuals were being supported by the program in the month of December. This compared with 3.6 million in the month of September.

The number of employees on JobKeeper in the month of December fell 65,000 compared to November. In November there had been a fall of 30,000 compared with October.

There was a 56% fall in employees on JobKeeper in its second phase compared with its first phase. Some 520,000 firms and 2.13 million employees went off the scheme after the end of September.

Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe has anticipated some job shedding after JobKeeper ends. This could cause brief rises or slower falls in unemployment, he said this month. He advocated an increase in the JobSeeker base rate, on fairness grounds. The government has yet to announce its long term plans for JobSeeker, but there is general support for it not going back to the old rate after the Coronvirus supplement ends.

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus told the ABC on Sunday JobKeeper should be extended for those businesses still affected by COVID.

Releasing the latest figures, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said with 785,000 jobs created in the last seven months, the government’s focus “continues to be getting people back into work”. But “we know that some families and businesses are still doing it tough and my message to those people is that the Morrison government continues to have your back.”

All industries saw marked reductions in employees on JobKeeper in the December quarter, compared with its first phase, with most falling by at least half.

Retail trade saw a 68% decrease, taking those on the support from an average of 26% of the workforce over the first phase to 8% over the second phase.

In accommodation and food services the fall was 52%, to 17% of the workforce in phase two.

Education and training saw a 50% fall, to 6% of the workforce.

Other declines between phases were: wholesale trade, 71% (to 12% of the workforce), construction 48% (to 18%), transport, postal and warehousing 36% (to 17%).

The government insists it will not extend the program although it will look at further assistance where there is a particular need.

The JobKeeper figures come as Health Minister Greg Hunt said the first doses of vaccine will arrive from overseas “before the end of the week, if not earlier”, and Victoria announced two new local cases and another one in hotel quarantine.

At the front of the queue to get the vaccine will be quarantine and border workers, as well as aged care residents and staff.

Hunt said once the vaccines arrived they would be examined to make sure there hadn’t been “any inflight actions that damage quality such as a loss of temperature”.

– ref. Victorians struggle to exit JobKeeper, as the scheme’s end looms – https://theconversation.com/victorians-struggle-to-exit-jobkeeper-as-the-schemes-end-looms-155288

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer S. Hunt, Lecturer in Security Studies, Australian National University

Twice-impeached former US President Donald Trump has evaded conviction once more.

On the fourth day of the impeachment trial, the Senate verdict is in. Voting guilty: 57 senators (representing nearly 70% of the country or 202 million people, and the majority public opinion on the issue of conviction). Voting not guilty: 43 Senators. In American maths, that is an acquittal, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

Moments after the vote, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called Trump’s actions before the attack “a disgraceful dereliction of duty” and confirmed the former president was “practically and morally” responsible for provoking the events on January 6 whereby “criminals were carrying his banners” lay siege to the Capitol.

Seven of McConnell’s Republican colleagues agreed, voting guilty. McConnell himself voted to acquit, arguing the Senate could not vote to convict because Trump had already left office – timing that was of McConnell’s own orchestration, as the president was impeached on January 13 while in office.

Read more: ‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol

The results seem a foregone conclusion, all the more so when the “jurists” skipped parts of the trial, and met with the defendant.

However, the case and evidence is important for posterity, as well as ongoing investigations. Impeached in the House of Representatives on charges of “inciting an insurrection”, the trial focused on how Trump’s actions while commander-in-chief led to predictable violence at the Capitol.

The facts of the day were not in dispute. Mobile phone data tracked hundreds of people moving from Trump’s rally, where he repeated false allegations of electoral fraud, to the legislative seat of government.

Once there, the mob discarded a US flag to install a Trump flag, constructed gallows, and spent the next several hours using poles and pipes to batter Capitol police officers to gain access to Congressional chambers.

Once inside, insurrectionists in tactical gear and carrying zip cuffs hunted lawmakers by name, chanted “hang Mike Pence”, and looted, robbed and defecated in congressional offices.

As rioters read Trump tweets aloud, the world bore witness through livestreams of the insurrection. In the end, more than 140 Capitol police were injured, with one losing an eye and two eventually losing their lives.

It was the predictable end to a steady stream of provocations, including Trump’s threats to election officials and culminating in his summoning supporters to Washington DC to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Describing the attack as an example of “stochastic terrorism” a specialist in political rhetoric, Jennifer Merceia, explained the incitement charge, in this way:

[…] you can’t predict who exactly will respond, but you can predict with certainty that someone will respond. And so you saw people sending pipe bombs to the media, saying that Trump told them to do it. You saw people over the last few weeks invading the Capitol and then later saying, I’m here because my president told me to be.

During the trial, senators heard how this constituted a pattern of behaviour: that Trump had revelled in acts of political violence in campaign rallies, promising to cover the legal costs of those arrested, escalating the demonisation of opponents even as Republican colleagues warned of harm.

In 2020, Trump practised directing his supporters to state legislatures to intimidate lawmakers. Tweeting to “liberate” states from COVID-19 lockdowns, supporters responded by storming state legislatures buildings carrying Nazi slogans, harassing lawmakers and stalking public health officials (several resigned). The FBI would later arrest several for plotting to kidnap, try and execute the Democratic governor of Michigan who had been the target of Trump’s rhetoric. His appointees, advisors, and former campaign manager echoed his message. Steve Bannon, whom Trump had just pardoned for fraud, discussed the imagined beheadings of bureaucrats, calling for “their heads on pikes” saying “that’s how you win the revolution”.

On the last day of the trial, the Senate voted 55-45 to accept witnesses, though none were heard. Several Senators had requested information on what actions Trump took to stop the violence.

However, Republicans threatened to block any efforts of the Biden administration to confirm nominations or pandemic relief should the trial continue. As Republican Senator Joni Ernst said:

If they want to drag this out, we’ll drag it out. They won’t get their noms, they won’t get anything.

After closed-door negotiations, the lawyers agreed to submit a single witness’s written testimony into the record. It was that of Republican Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, who overheard a heated phone call between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and former President Donald Trump, in which the president declined to intervene to stop the violence.

In voting to convict, Republican Mitt Romney would use this written testimony to assert

President Trump also violated his oath of office by failing to protect the Capitol, the Vice President, and others in the Capitol.

Why would senators side with a former president who potentially endangered their lives?

Explanations have centred on political and personal self-preservation. Only one Republican senator voted for conviction who is up for re-election in 2022 (several others are retiring).

In the end, Republicans could not convict Trump without implicating themselves. Several Republicans spoke at Trump’s rally, baselessly claimed Trump won the election, and even live-tweeted the location of Congressional leaders being pursued by the mob. Even after the Capitol attacks, 147 Republican Congress members voted not to recognise certified election results.

Read more: Why were the Capitol rioters so angry? Because they’re scared of losing grip on their perverse idea of democracy

It is a dangerous precedent if the top magistrate is free to incite violence to stop the recognition of lawful election results, or ignore them completely. The consequences are already apparent in state legislatures. In Pennsylvania – the Republican legislature, repeating baseless claims of election fraud, refused to seat a duly elected Democratic member. In Michigan, the Senate Majority leader Republican Mike Shirkey called the insurrection “staged”, while Republican state parties have moved to censure Congress members who voted for impeachment or conviction.

Other Republican state legislatures have responded to overwhelming 2020 voter turnout by stripping voting rights from their constituents, introducing 100 voter suppression bills in 28 states ahead of the 2022 midterms. Meanwhile Trump still has not conceded, thus the rationale for violence continues.

Trump remains under investigation. Georgia has launched a criminal probe in the wake of the recorded call in which Trump orders election officials to “find 11,000 votes” for him. A commission into the January 6 insurrection also looks likely.

However, short of invocation of the 14th amendment, Trump remains free to run for office again. The world will watch these development just as it watched the Capitol attacks.

Allies could be forgiven for wondering how the US can come to their aid when it declines to protect its own seat of government. The work of President Joe Biden to repair US standing on the world stage just became a little tougher.

– ref. Trump evades conviction again as Republicans opt for self-preservation – https://theconversation.com/trump-evades-conviction-again-as-republicans-opt-for-self-preservation-155283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

Victoria will go into stage 4 lockdown from 11.59pm tonight, as the cluster from the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel continues to grow.

Premier Daniel Andrews announced the circuit-breaker lockdown this afternoon, citing the threat posed by the “hyper-infectious” UK strain.

Victorians will again only be allowed to leave their homes for four reasons: to shop for necessary goods, to provide care, for essential work or permitted education, or for exercise. The controversial five-kilometre radius is also back in place, while masks will be compulsory everywhere outside the home.

This lockdown understandably comes as a significant blow to Victorians (myself included), after having endured a three-month lockdown during the second wave of COVID infections last year. However, it’s important to understand that the situation we’re in right now is quite different to the one we faced in 2020.

Read more: Another hotel worker tests positive in Melbourne. It’s time to move hotel quarantine out of cities

Is this lockdown justified?

I think it’s pretty hard to fault the rationale for this lockdown: the public health response has not been able to get ahead of transmission, and therefore the state government has assessed there’s a risk this outbreak will get away from them.

There are now at least 13 cases linked to the Holiday Inn. But the crucial point is that the close and casual contacts number in the hundreds.

As Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton explained, the public health team has found that by the time they identify cases in this new cluster, those people have already become infectious and have had an opportunity to spread the virus. As a result, authorities don’t feel they are currently across all of the chains of transmission.

A circuit-breaker lockdown aims to crush transmission before it gains a foothold. The goal is to limit the contact people have with each other, to buy time for the public health team to do its work.

Some people may be asking whether a lockdown is necessary, or whether the Victorian government has already waited too long, given Queensland and Western Australia implemented circuit-breaker lockdowns in Brisbane and Perth after only a single case got out of hotel quarantine.

We may have a better sense of the appropriateness of this lockdown in a few days’ time — as we see how many more cases pop up — but it’s very difficult to answer this question right now.

I don’t think cases escaping from hotel quarantine necessarily requires a lockdown. This event, however, appears to have some unique characteristics.

Read more: What are nebulisers? And how could they help spread COVID-19?

The UK strain

In explaining the need for this lockdown, Andrews took pains to stress the fact we’re dealing with the UK strain of the coronavirus.

According to a statement on the Premier’s website:

Right now, we are reaching close contacts well within the 48-hour benchmark. But the time between exposure, incubation, symptoms and testing positive is rapidly shortening. So much so, that even secondary close contacts are potentially infectious within that 48-hour window.

In short: this hyper-infectious variant is moving at hyper-speed.

Although evidence indicates the UK strain is more infectious, it has not generally been reported that the incubation period is any different. So while this is biologically plausible, I think we need to be cautious about accepting it as fact.

A balancing act

It’s clear authorities are caught between a rock and a hard place in making these calls. There will always be those who are critical when a lockdown is called, and those who are critical when they feel unnecessary risks are taken. Making these decisions and factoring in costs and benefits is a delicate balancing act.

One can appreciate it was in the best interests of all Victorians to make every attempt to bring transmission under control without resorting to a lockdown. But once the assessment was made that there was the risk of transmission getting out of control, the government clearly felt it had to make this tough decision to stave off the possibility of a third wave in Victoria.

It’s important to draw a distinction between this short, sharp lockdown, which is hopefully just a precautionary measure, and the extended lockdown we were forced into when transmission got away from us during the second wave.

If you are going to use a lockdown, this is how they should be used, according to the World Health Organisation. They’re not designed to drag on for months — and this new lockdown should allow us to avert a scenario where that’s necessary.

Read more: UK, South African, Brazilian: a virologist explains each COVID variant and what they mean for the pandemic

The weight of this decision on Andrews and the rest of the team today was clear. Andrews was measured, sombre, even apologetic. It was obvious how hard a decision it was to make.

While another lockdown might be difficult to stomach, it will buy us some time, give the public health response a chance to get ahead of the latest cluster, and hopefully achieve its objective of averting the need for a longer lockdown later.

The philosophy is that it’s better to be safe than sorry, and no one can blame the authorities for this approach.

– ref. Yes, another lockdown in Victoria hurts. But it might be our only way to avert a third wave – https://theconversation.com/yes-another-lockdown-in-victoria-hurts-but-it-might-be-our-only-way-to-avert-a-third-wave-155212

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Wood, Associate Professor, Discipline of Childhood and Adolescent Health, University of Sydney

With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines about to begin in Australia, people may be wondering if they’re safe (and effective) in the long term. What might be the health consequences a year after vaccination, or further into the future?

While it’s true COVID-19 vaccines have been developed in record time, the importance of tracking vaccine safety is not new. We routinely monitor the safety of all vaccinations, years after they’ve been used in millions of people.

And in guidance from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) this week, we have a clearer picture of how we’ll know about any unexpected, rare or long-term side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines. In fact, we’ll use and build on many existing systems to look out for these.

Read more: Less than a year to develop a COVID vaccine – here’s why you shouldn’t be alarmed

Vaccine trials only tell us so much

Late-stage vaccine trials in tens of thousands of people only last for a defined period of time, typically 12 months. Vaccine manufacturers present data on vaccine safety (and efficacy) for that time-frame to regulatory bodies. Safety data is rigorously assessed before a vaccine is approved for use.

But when approved vaccines are then given to the general public, we can monitor for any new events that may occur unexpectedly in both the short and longer term. Tracking potential side-effects in the real world in all people who have a vaccine, and outside the tightly controlled conditions of a trial, means we can ensure the vaccine is safe when given to millions — or billions — of people.

Read more: How will COVID-19 vaccines be approved for use in Australia?

So how might this work for COVID-19 vaccines? The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine phase 3 trial reported safety data until about 14 weeks after the second dose. The Oxford/AstraZeneca trial reported safety data after about three months after the first dose, and two months after the second dose.

However, participants in both these large trials will continue to be followed up for both efficacy and safety until the end of the study from around 12 months after the first dose of vaccine.

COVID vaccine safety is also being monitored in several other ways, by individual countries, including Australia. Countries also share their vaccine safety monitoring data via a global database.

Read more: People with severe allergies warned off Pfizer COVID vaccine for now. But that may change as more details emerge

Here’s how we’ll monitor COVID vaccine safety in Australia

The TGA has overall responsibility for monitoring the safety of medicines and vaccines in Australia. Just this week, the TGA released its plans for monitoring the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

This includes the timely collection and management of reports of COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, an ability to urgently detect any safety concerns and to communicate safety issues to the public.

‘Passive’ surveillance

A cornerstone of the system Australia has had in place for decades to capture any possible vaccine reactions is “passive” surveillance. In practice, this means anyone can report a reaction to the TGA, the public included.

If your GP or nurse thinks you may have had a reaction they should report this to their state or territory health department, which then informs the TGA. This is mandatory in some jurisdictions but not in others.

The TGA is encouraging health professionals and consumers to report suspected side-effects to COVID-19 vaccines and there is a guide on its website on how to do this.

The TGA has a database that records any reported possible reactions. If there are any suspected safety issues, these are immediately investigated and necessary action is taken. For example, if necessary an immunisation program can be stopped or special precautions implemented. TGA can also issue safety alerts.

‘Active’ surveillance

Since 2014, Australia has also been actively looking for any safety concerns via the AusVaxSafety surveillance system, led by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, which we are affiliated with.

We send texts or emails to people asking them to fill out a survey on their health after being vaccinated. This system enables us to detect any suspected safety issues in near real time. Last year, AusVaxSafety surveyed nearly 290,000 people after they had the 2020 influenza vaccine and found more than 94% felt completely well. Others had mild and expected short-term side effects.

This system will be used to pick up any safety concerns when the COVID-19 vaccines roll out in the next few weeks. If you are vaccinated at selected sites, including GP practices and COVID-19 vaccine hubs, you will be told about this automated system. You don’t have to register or enrol but will be sent an SMS on day 3 and day 8 after each vaccine dose (you can decide whether to fill out the survey). Your anonymised results will be reported to your state or territory health department and the TGA.

This system will probably be in place to monitor safety of the COVID-19 vaccines for a few years. And as new vaccine brands come on board, we will continue to monitor those too.

Read more: What will Australia’s COVID vaccination program look like? 4 key questions answered

We can also learn from other countries

The United States has recently developed an equivalent system, V-safe. Safety data from this system from about two million people who have had a COVID-19 vaccine indicates the vaccines are safe. The short-term side-effects are very similar to those reported in the vaccine trials. The most common reactions include injection site pain, headache, tiredness and muscle aches, usually in the first two days and then resolving within a week after vaccination.

And worldwide, more than 150 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have already been given, with no unexpected safety concerns.

Read more: Who pays compensation if a COVID-19 vaccine has rare side-effects? Here’s the little we know about Australia’s new deal

In a nutshell

The potential benefits to us all from a mass vaccination program against COVID-19 far outweigh the potential side-effects, based on data from millions of people who have already been vaccinated around the world. Yet, we know all medicines, vaccines included, have the potential for side-effects.

However, by using, and building on, our already established safety surveillance system, we will be “on top” of rapidly identifying any possible safety concerns. That’s immediately after vaccination and into the longer term.

– ref. COVID vaccines have been developed in record time. But how will we know they’re safe? – https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccines-have-been-developed-in-record-time-but-how-will-we-know-theyre-safe-153888

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Duane W. Hamacher, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne

The New Moon this month marks the start of the Lunar New Year and reminds us of how important our orbiting neighbour is to us.

It’s a relationship long described by many cultures across the globe, particularly with its links to tides and weather.

In the Torres Strait it was a crucially important element in helping the islanders win a legal battle for sea rights.

Under a Meriam Moon

In the Torres Strait, the Moon plays an important role in culture, identity and daily life. Every aspect of our natural satellite – from its phase, position, appearance and brightness – has special significance and meaning.

A traditional story of the Meriam people from Mer (Murray Island), in the eastern Torres Strait, explains how you can see a lady in the Full Moon weaving mats.

Read more: Why do different cultures see such similar meanings in the constellations?

She was brought there by the Moon Man, which describes the formation of the maria (dark patches) on its surface that form the silhouette of the woman.

Tides of change

Lunar phases link to the changing tides, a relationship that is well established in Islander knowledge systems.

One practical application links to fishing. Elders teach that the best time to fish is during a neap (low) tide during the First or Last Quarter Moon, rather than a spring (high) tide during the New or Full Moon phase.

The spring tides are much bigger, meaning the tidal waters rush in and out more significantly, stirring up silt and sediment on the sea floor. This clouds the water, making it harder for fish to see the bait and fishers to see the fish.

The waters of spring tides also pull fish out to sea. During the smaller neap tides, the water is clearer and fish don’t move as far, making them easier to see and catch.

Gardeners such as Meriam elder Uncle Alo Tapim (below) plant their gardens by the phases of the Moon. The cusps (tips) of the crescent Moon (kerkar meb) point in different directions throughout the year, as we move from summer solstice to winter solstice and back again.

Uncle Segar Passi (above), a senior Meriam elder, teaches that when the Moon cusps point upwards (Meb metalug em), the Moon looks like a bowl collecting water. The water is choppy and you will see cumulus clouds in the sky. This occurs during the Sager (dry season), a period of fine weather.

When the Moon tilts on its side (Meb uag em), thin cirrus clouds are visible and a fuzzy ring may form around the Moon. The seas look calm and mirror-flat and you will see thin cirrus clouds, but this is when the water pours out of the bowl, falling as the rains of the Kuki (wet season).

Moon halos are used to forecast weather. In the Torres Strait, the ring around the Moon (susri) is seen to be a hut built by the Moon Man to shield himself from coming rain.

Halos form around the Moon when moonlight passes through ice crystals high in the atmosphere. These form in low fronts, which often bring rain.

An eclipse of the Moon

On Badu, in the Torres Strait, an eclipse of the Moon is called Merlpal Maru Pathanu, meaning “the ghost has taken the spirit of the Moon”.

It was an omen of war. On Boigu, the northern-most island, men would don a special headdress and perform a ceremony to figure out the direction of the incoming attack.

The same name is used for a solar eclipse, which is seen as the superposition of the two celestial bodies.

A battle for sea rights

Every June 3, Australia celebrates Mabo Day, marking the decision by the High Court of Australia to overturn the legal fiction of terra nullius (“a land belonging to no one”) in a landmark court case.

This was driven by Meriam man Edward Koike Mabo, paving the way for Native Title. But this ruling did not necessarily extend to sea rights.

In the early 2000s, the people of Mer launched a legal battle for sea rights. Government lawyers argued against the declaration by claiming each island was a separate enclave with no connection to one another.

But Torres Strait Islanders have a long history of cultural, linguistic and family connections across the Strait and with Papua New Guinea and mainland Australia.

During the proceedings, Meriam people were required to prove their longstanding connections in court. One crucial piece of evidence was a traditional Moon Dance.

Gedge Togia

Gedge Togia is a sacred spiritual dance (kab kar) of the Meriam people, linking the islands of Mabuyag (also known as Mabuiag) and Mer.

The lyrics are “Gedge Togia, Milpanuka”, which means “Moon rising over home” in two languages: Gedge Togia is the Meriam Mir language phrase meaning “to rise over home”, and Milpanuka is the Mabuyag dialect term for the Moon, which is derived from Milpal, a Kala Lagau Ya word for the Full Moon. For comparison, the Meriam Mir name of the Moon is Meb.

Read more: Kindred skies: ancient Greeks and Aboriginal Australians saw constellations in common

During legal proceedings in the mid-2000s, a judge travelled to Mer and observed testimony presented by elders. Alo Tapim sang the song and explained the dance, the traditional dress and its importance and relevance to Meriam and Mabuyag connections.

Mabuyag and Mer are 200km apart, lying almost due east and west of one another. As Meriam people sail home from Mabuyag they will see the Full Moon rising over Mer at dusk or the crescent Moon rising at dawn.

Gedge Togia and the Moon demonstrates the longstanding connections between Mer and Mabuyag, and helped Islanders win their battle for sea rights.

– ref. The Moon plays an important role in Indigenous culture and helped win a battle over sea rights – https://theconversation.com/the-moon-plays-an-important-role-in-indigenous-culture-and-helped-win-a-battle-over-sea-rights-119081

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

Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher, including the prospect of net zero emissions by 2050, and the battlelines being drawn within the National Party and wider Coalition over how to get there. They also discuss industrial relations, the government’s legislation before parliament, Labor’s planned policy, and the debate that will ensue.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on industrial relations and a plan for net zero emissions by 2050 – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-industrial-relations-and-a-plan-for-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-155210

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Associate Professor in Sociology and Co-Director of The Policy Lab, University of Melbourne

The COVID-19 pandemic was heralded as an opportunity to restart gender expectations at home. Our research shows Australian fathers have stepped into more participatory roles, but the question remains: will it last?

At the height of the first lockdown, the global economy closed and with it schools, childcare centres and employment shut. For many parents, the work associated with maintaining a job, homeschooling, round-the-clock caregiving and keeping a household afloat fell squarely on their shoulders. Some argued this would be a critical moment for men to step up as more egalitarian partners and help equalise gender norms in the home.

Our new study indicates Australian fathers took on more domestic work than their US counterparts but at the same cost women have suffered in trying to reconcile their work and family commitments: a rise in sleeplessness and anxiety.

COVID reshaped parents’ paid and unpaid work

We surveyed 1,375 Australian and US parents using the YouGov panels in May and September 2020. In May, the global economy had largely shut down in response to the virus. By September, US children were starting a new school year, while Australia was facing a second spike and a severe lockdown in Victoria.

We asked parents about how their employment, housework and childcare had changed during these COVID-affected times.

We found roughly one in three Australian mothers and fathers in our sample lost or reduced work under COVID in May, which continued into September. Of course, these patterns varied by state, with Victorians bearing the brunt of employment disruption.

One in three US parents reported employment disruptions in May. By September, employment disruptions had declined, but still remained at high levels.

Read more: COVID-19 is a disaster for mothers’ employment. And no, working from home is not the solution

What happened on the home front? We found Australian and US mothers both reported picking up more housework during the pandemic. For fathers, an interesting pattern emerged.

Australian fathers increased their contributions to housework. We first observed this in May 2020, then again four months later.

US fathers, in contrast, picked up more housework in May, but this was short-lived. As the pandemic endured, US mothers have filled the housework and childcare voids while US fathers pulled back their contributions to domestic work and caregiving.

Increased domestic load harms health and well-being

We know the stress of managing work and family can cause people’s health to deteriorate, and lead many mothers to leave the labor force. Add to that the uncertainty and fear around a global pandemic, and the affect on parents’ mental health is profound.

Our research showed Australian fathers experienced stress due to economic disruptions. Still, they stepped up their domestic game during the pandemic. And, with it, they felt the same stressors that mothers conventionally experience. The increased childcare and household demands during the pandemic came with greater anxiety and worse sleep among both Australian fathers and mothers.

The pandemic has been extremely difficult, but in Australia it is fathers and mothers carrying this burden.

For US fathers, only job disruption is associated with worse anxiety and poor sleep. Importantly, their stress was unaffected by caregiving demands — perhaps because, as our data show, they did not consistently increase their contributions to housework and childcare during the pandemic.

For US mothers, both job loss and greater housework demands increased their sleeplessness and anxiety. US fathers reduced their childcare contributions from May to September, and contributed less to the running of the house across that time.

In this respect, US fathers appear to have doubled down on their roles as breadwinners. As a result, their mental wellness is mostly based on their economic standing, leaving US mothers alone to carry the burden of growing housework and childcare demands during the pandemic.

Silver linings?

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unparalleled pressures on US and Australian families, leaving devastation in its wake. Our results indicate this movement towards gender equality among Australian parents came at a cost to their health, through greater anxiety and poorer sleep.

But existing research shows mothers in both countries have carried these dual burdens for a long time, with detrimental impacts on their lives, livelihoods and health. Australian fathers, for the first time ever, may have felt the intensity of these competing pressures, and perhaps their larger share of domestic work may stick.

We found one silver lining of the pandemic, at least in the case of Australia: Australian fathers stepped up to do more childcare and housework. Let’s hope this lasts.

Read more: Why coronavirus may forever change the way we care within families

– ref. COVID forced Australian fathers to do more at home, but at the same cost mothers have long endured – https://theconversation.com/covid-forced-australian-fathers-to-do-more-at-home-but-at-the-same-cost-mothers-have-long-endured-154834

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lara Herrero, Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, Griffith University

Living through a global pandemic over the past year has seen all of us expanding our vocabularies. We now understand terms like PPE, social distancing and contact tracing.

But just when perhaps we thought we had a handle on most of the terminology, we’re faced with another set of new words: mutation, variant and strain.

So, what do they mean?

The genetic material of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is called ribonucleic acid (RNA). To replicate, and therefore establish infection, SARS-CoV-2 RNA must hijack a host cell and use the cell’s machinery to duplicate itself.

Errors often occur during the process of duplicating the viral RNA. This results in viruses that are similar but not exact copies of the original virus. These errors in the viral RNA are called mutations, and viruses with these mutations are called variants. Variants could differ by a single or many mutations.

Not all mutations have the same effect. To understand this better, we need to understand the basics of our genetic code (DNA for humans; RNA for SARS-CoV-2). This code is like a blueprint on which all organisms are built. When a mutation occurs at a single point, it won’t necessarily change any of the building blocks (called amino acids). In this case, it won’t change how the organism (human or virus) is built.

On occasion though, these single mutations occur in a part of the virus RNA that causes a change in a particular building block. In some cases, there could be many mutations that together alter the building block.

Read more: UK, South African, Brazilian: a virologist explains each COVID variant and what they mean for the pandemic

A variant is a referred to as a strain when it shows distinct physical properties. Put simply, a strain is a variant that is built differently, and so behaves differently, to its parent virus. These behavioural differences can be subtle or obvious.

For example, these differences could involve a variant binding to a different cell receptor, or binding more strongly to a receptor, or replicating more quickly, or transmitting more efficiently, and so on.

Essentially, all strains are variants, but not all variants are strains.

Common variants (which are also strains)

Three of the most common SARS-CoV-2 variants are what we’ve come to know as the UK variant (B.1.1.7), the South African variant (B.1.351) and the Brazilian variant (P.1). Each contains several different mutations.

Let’s look at the UK variant as an example. This variant has a large number of mutations in the spike protein, which aids the virus in its effort to invade human cells.

The increased transmission of the UK variant is believed to be associated with a mutation called N501Y, which allows SARS-CoV-2 to bind more readily to the human receptor ACE2, the entry point for SARS-CoV-2 to a wide range of human cells.

This variant is now widespread in more than 70 countries, and has recently been detected in Australia.

While we commonly call it the “UK variant” (which it is), it’s also a strain because it displays different behaviours to the parental strain.

We’ve got lots more to learn

There is some confusion around how best to use these terms. Given all strains are variants (but not all variants are strains), it makes sense the term variant is more common. But when the science shows these variants behave differently, it would be more accurate to call them strains.

Pleasingly, the World Health Organisation and health departments in Australia appear to be using the terms correctly in the context of SARS-CoV-2.

Read more: Why the COVID-19 variants are so dangerous and how to stop them spreading

The big question everyone is asking at the moment is how the new variants and strains will affect the efficacy of our COVID vaccines.

The scientific community is uncovering more information about emerging mutations, variants and strains all the time, and leading vaccine developers are testing and evaluating the efficacy of their vaccines in this light.

Some recently licensed vaccines appear to protect well against the UK variant but recent data from Novavax, Johnson & Johnson and Oxford/AstraZeneca indicates possible reduced protection against the South African variant.

Health authorities in South Africa recently paused their rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for this reason. However, its too early to tell what impact, if any, this will have on Australia’s vaccine plans.

The vaccine rollout in Australia will assess all information as it comes to light and ensure optimal available protection for the population.

Read more: Concerning coronavirus mutation now found in UK variant – here’s what you need to know

– ref. What’s the difference between mutations, variants and strains? A guide to COVID terminology – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-mutations-variants-and-strains-a-guide-to-covid-terminology-154825