David Welch, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau and Nigel French, Massey University
As Omicron cases soar in New Zealand, most people can still avoid getting infected. Even if you share a household with an infected person, catching the virus is not at all inevitable.
A senior World Health Organisation envoy caused consternation by proclaiming lockdowns are not a good long-term strategy against COVID-19. But it’s true, and other subtler tactics are better in the long run.
The spread of the virus through households creates costs higher than for isolation in hotels when families are large and living at close quarters as in Melbourne’s public housing towers.
The US is slowly reopening, but the messages from governments are confusing. An expert offers guidance on many people’s first priority – connecting with loved ones.
With no place to wash hands and nowhere to physically isolate, many poor Indonesians are incredibly vulnerable as COVID-19 sweeps through the global south.
Critics say older people are being put at risk by the relaxed approach to social distancing. But they seem to be the most in favour of it, according to a new survey.
Whatever the eventual impact on women’s candidacies post-pandemic, COVID-19 has the potential to shock the system, upending or reinforcing existing gender imbalances in political power.
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.
Understanding isolation’s effects on regular people, rather than those certified to have ‘the right stuff,’ will help prepare us for the future, whether another pandemic or interplanetary space travel.
Professor, Co-Lead of the Disrupting Violence Beacon and Director of Violence Research and Prevention Program, Griffith Criminology Institute and School of Health Sciences and Social Work, Griffith University
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford