Fostering connection for isolated families

Voluntary community organisations can play a vital role in easing the social stress and isolation of vulnerable families during the current health crisis and beyond. However these practical and cost-effective approaches need better funding to help everyone who needs them.

Counting the psychological cost of the lockdown

Will the social distancing and extreme hygiene practices advocated to fight COVID-19 be harmful or helpful for the long term?

Will freedom be a casualty in the war against COVID-19?

Mass digital surveillance is increasingly being used around the world to control COVID-19. But once the pandemic fades, will the surveillance stay?

Covid-19: Engaging our leadership, our humanity, our values

The Covid-19 crisis is proving bigger than any of us could have imagined but we should not underestimate our roles, our actions and the power in them to come through this crisis together.

Friendly fire in the war on COVID-19

In responding to the dreaded Coronavirus outbreak, governments on a war footing face a policy dilemma: remedy or overkill? It is right and important, always, to be sensitive to the possibility that government action might do more harm than good.

It’s time for mass-testing

Random testing is the key to stopping this contagion until we can mass-test the entire population. If a billion dollars were spent on testing and isolating the infected, we may save billions in the months ahead.

All sport is global: A hard lesson from the pandemic

It has taken the wicked problem of a hyper-contagious virus emerging in East Asia and passing rapidly around the world to demonstrate the vulnerability of sport’s global system of just-in-time, continuous production.

Keeping aged care residents connected

As COVID-19 increasingly impacts on our day-to-day lives, people in aged care homes are already isolated. But new technologies can play a role keeping residents connected to their loved ones.

Modelling the spread of COVID-19

Forecasting the spread of COVID-19, including the likely number of undetected cases, is fraught and difficult, but a sense of the numbers is important for appreciating the challenges ahead.

Masks, no gatherings!

It’s not only doctors who are calling for more action to curb coronavirus. School children are starting their own petitions to urge their elders to protect people from the disease.

Gods, microbes and men

Iran’s disastrous initial response to the coronavirus outbreak could lead to thousands more deaths, and highlights the problems caused when religion has undue influence over politics.

The ethical challenge of Coronavirus

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing us to ask some very hard questions about the balance to strike between health, business and personal freedom, but will we be ready for the answers if hard decisions must be made?