As the cases of coronavirus spread across the world, China is keen to position itself as a charitable country through “mask diplomacy” internationally, while showing a different face at home.
Robert Breunig, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University and Tristram Sainsbury, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The unintended loophole allows some people to keep their income and cut the tax rate on some of it to 15%.
Would you drink a martini while others tried to stop a boulder from crushing a crowd? In the coronavirus crisis, we are all responsible for the outcome – and we need to start behaving that way.
The government has announced direct cash transfers to poorer households, but major challenges remain in providing for the 500 million employed in the informal economy.
Makeshift hospital beds at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne during the influenza pandemic of 1919.
Museum Victoria
New research shows Australian women living under new coronavirus regulations are in fear of their lives from abusive partners or former partners. Action must be taken now to stop it.
Gullibility, cynicism, pride, closed mindedness, negligence and wishful thinking. If you can use any of these to describe your reasoning, it’s likely you’re committing a sin of thought.
A tattoo parlour in Toronto remains closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(michael_swan/flickr)
Businesses are struggling in these difficult times — but there is a shimmer of hope in the incredible creativity, ingenuity and resilience that we see from around the globe.
Government officers seize civets in a wildlife market in Guangzhou, China to prevent the spread of SARS in 2004.
Dustin Shum/South China Morning Post via Getty Images
Wild animals and animal parts are bought and sold worldwide, often illegally. This multibillion-dollar industry is pushing species to extinction, fueling crime and spreading disease.
A building damaged during anti-Asian riots in Vancouver in 1907.
(UBC Archives, JCPC_ 36_017)
Fear of COVID-19 has sparked some to react with violent racism towards Asian Americans and Canadians. This is not the first time fear of disease has led to outbreaks of violent anti-Asian racism.
Despite an increasingly positive representation of old people in the media, it is not the reality for the majority whose frailty and vulnerability disturb society to the point of denial.
Beijing might have been ultra-tough on the pandemic, but it has been horizontal in response to the economic shock.
The Black Death inspired medieval writers to document their era of plague. Their anxieties and fears are starkly reminiscent of our own even if their solutions differ.
(Shutterstock)
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne