Our relationships with characters from books and screen – called parasocial relationships – serve many of the same functions as our friendships with real people, minus the infection risks.
For many women, childcare has been unaffordable. Suddenly it’s free. It’s as if we have finally realised it is an essential service.
Pumpjacks pump crude oil near Halkirk, Alta., more than a decade ago. Oil prices have plunged into negative territory due to the glut created by the COVID-19 global economic shutdown.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Larry MacDougall
Alberta oil is the collateral damage of the oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, with COVID-19 launching an additional attack. The province’s oil industry will struggle to recover.
We must figure out how to scale the lockdown up and down as needed – possibly several times. We might need to locally switch areas on and off – not the whole country – to deal with isolated outbreaks.
Noting nature around you – it could be a glance outside, tending plants, or ‘green’ exercise – will improve your well-being, research shows. The coronavirus pandemic has made it even more important.
Freedom of political communication is implied in the constitution, but protesters have still been fined for breaching social distancing rules by leaving their homes.
All families need to establish a new normal.
Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
A family therapist and childhood development expert encourages parents and others raising kids to focus on the 4 R’s: routines, rules, relationships and rituals.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro puts on a mask during a March news conference about the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP Photo/Andre Borges)
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been called the South American version of Donald Trump. His behaviour during the coronavirus pandemic shows why.
A woman waits for a streetcar in Toronto on April 16, 2020. The many Black people working in essential jobs do not have the luxury of staying home during the pandemic.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Black lives are further in peril in a time of COVID-19. Subject to death on both the public health and policing fronts, we will not be silent.
Nary a mask in sight at a market area in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong refugee camp for Rohingya, Ukhia, March 24, 2020.
Suzauddin Rubel/AFP via Getty Images
COVID-19 is spreading quickly in Bangladesh. An outbreak in the refugee camps that house some 1 million Rohingya Muslims in cramped, unsanitary quarters would be calamitous.
No, this person is not creating a deadly virus.
CDC / Unsplash
The conspiracy theory that Covid-19 was created in a laboratory has been widely reported, yet there is no evidence to support it. Why such theories thrive can easily be explained, however.
Our working lives provide us with something more important than a pay cheque.
A food market in Ibafo in Nigeria’s Ogun State. The effects of COVID-19 on food systems will be keenly felt in poorer countries.
Photo by Olukayode Jaiyeola/NurPhoto via Getty Images
When restricting the movement of their citizens to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, low income countries should tailor measures to local socio-economic circumstances.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand