Working out how to fight COVID together

Social and behavioural sciences can help us get the most out of the COVID-19 regulations, according to Aussie and international researchers who have listed some recommendations for different stages of the pandemic.

Give Victorians the facts on the abattoir outbreak

The Victorian government’s refusal to name the meat-packing plant at the centre of a COVID-19 hotspot places the public at risk, and threatens to erode the mutual trust required to fight the pandemic together.

Balancing the lives we save and lose through lockdown

The unprecedented social and economic lockdown has prevented many deaths from coronavirus, but this is at the cost of other lives, as well as national and individual livelihoods, and the accounting behind the calculation needs to be made clear.

Behavioural economics can boost the government’s COVID app

The government’s new COVID tracing app may need 80% of us to use it to work properly and help lift the restrictions. Unless it is made mandatory, private and social incentives may be required to encourage public adoption.

New QUT model offers a glimmer of hope

Covidwave.org, a new, more accurate pandemic predictor devised at QUT, suggests the worst of the crisis has passed in Australia, but that there will be many more deaths elsewhere.

Journal of the plague year

Universities around the world are collaborating to crowd-source coronavirus accounts and create an archive of the COVID-19 epidemic for future historians to study.

Is mechanical ventilation exacerbating the COVID-19 death toll?

Health services around the world have scrambled to amass more mechanical ventilators to help the patients most adversely affected by COVID-19, but the use of these machines involves risks of its own, and careful management and nursing.

Staying the course

There are increasing calls to relax the economic and social restrictions designed to slow the spread of COVID-19, but the numbers say we must stay the course, or risk undoing everything we’ve so far achieved in protecting lives and the health system.

Alone together

Do you have a housemate who’s refusing to keep their social distance to help fight COVID-19? Here’s how a mental health expert suggests you respond to defuse the situation while keeping everyone safe.  

COVID-19 will shape a better response to future pandemics

Entering its fourth month, COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc worldwide and challenge earlier notions of how best to respond to epidemics. Its geographic scope, high infection and casualty toll and severe economic effect raise the bar for responses to future pandemics.

A long term crisis needs long term solutions

The government should immediately create a Covid-19 funding body with a mandate to identify critical capacity and capability shortfalls and to encourage, lead and drive solutions to tackle the unfolding health crisis.

The world fractures when cohesion is vital

The further splintering of an international consensus and retreat from a globalising world as individual states look out for themselves may well prove one of the enduring consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.