#covid19aus

[buyziverdokit]

Welcome to the best MedicineStore!

[strandedaustralian]

To the tune of, “I Still Call Australia Home”. Written in September 2020 and still far too relevant now. Tens of thousands of Australians remain stranded overseas. The Australian Government does not need to bring #strandedaussies home - they need to stop being the obstacles in the way of their return.

[annabella0978]

[5millionfriends]

Beyoncé has highlighted the disproportionately high death rates from coronavirus Beyoncé has highlighted the disproportionately high death rates from coronavirus among black communities in the US.

[woohootattooo]

What it feels like going to the shops right now. 😷😷😷 Be smart, wash your hands and stay inside. 🦠🧼🤒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ——————⠀ #thesims #thesims4 #sims #TS4 #twitchadelaide #twitch #youtube #mine #simstagram #simblr #simmers #simscommunity #girlgamer #gamersofaus #aussiesimmers #theladystardust_au #EAGameChanger #simsstreamers #covid19aus #strangerville #thesims4strangerville #coronavirus #hazmatsuit #ts4strangerville https://www.instagram.com/p/B-JsZSsFAhN/?igshid=lvtnmmtoxsqb

[asynca]

Masks become mandatory in Melbourne from Wednesday night. As part of this, I'd like everyone to take a few minutes out of their day to gently and respectfully pressure any STUPID AS SHIT relatives and friends you might have who are intending on not wearing masks or wearing them deliberately incorrectly. If we make social pariahs out of people who intend on functioning as filthy plague rats, perhaps they will wear masks just to be left alone - which is just as effective as wearing masks for all the socially responsible reasons.

[engagedpractx]

Bigger is not better with engagement

How effective is a taskforce with 95 members, asking for 400 word submissions?

By my count there are ninety-five members of the Group of Eight ‘Roadmap to Recovery’ task force. Almost all professors, and among their number there are eminent, practical scholars I have worked with or whose work I admire — people whose presence gives me confidence in the exercise overall. 

But with committee processes, bigger is not better. Analysis of the papers of the British War Cabinets found that factions emerged when committees had eight or more people people, and consensus could not be reached when they numbered 18 plus. 

Similarly, studies of corporate boards found major corporations with smaller boards (around 8 members) delivered better returns to shareholders than similar-sized competitors with larger boards (11+).

The taskforce has just put out a call for submissions as part of a consultation process. It has defined eleven substantive questions, and they are huge topics.

Persons and groups making submissions can nominate one (1) question to answer, and they can submit 400 words, with up to five (5) references, total. 

Then submissions will be ‘triaged for quality’ and the final cut will be considered by taskforce members. The process is conducted online, following ‘a semi-structured method called “Contending Analyses,” where teams generate multiple alternative analytical “takes” on a problem, then select and develop the most promising.’ So, basically, a hackathon with takes instead of pitches. 

As my twitter handle suggests, as a researcher and a practitioner I am curious about and committed to the value of engaged practice. 

This is more than the practices of consultation and stakeholder engagement, although I see them both as fitting under that heading. It also includes peer-based and community-led programs, organisations and movements, for whom engagement is their day-to-day work, not a separate, time-limited activity. 

Engagement falls on a spectrum between a tick-a-box feedback survey and that deeply engaged peer-based community-led approach. 

Unlike models like Arnstein’s ladder, I don’t see more (closer, deeper, etc) engagement as necessarily better. (For example, very close engagement with government can be a very bad thing for community-based organisations.) 

What matters is that your methods and depth and longevity of engagement are ethically defensible and appropriate to your goals.

There’s an association for corporate engagement practitioners called AccountAbility, and they have produced a guideline called the Stakeholder Engagement Standard (2015). 

I don’t endorse it all, but it’s based on experience of practitioners working at the very pointy end, e.g. reaching out to communities on the Gulf Coast of the United States after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. And surprisingly, what those trauma cleaners of corporate wrongdoing want you to understand is the mission-critical importance of authentic, transparent engagement practice. 

Chapter 3 emphasises being clear (within your initiative, and to all its stakeholders) about your purposes for engagement and the scope (depth, breadth, longevity, etc). 

The engagement commenced by the GO8 is broad and shallow, yet the questions it seeks to answer are complex, vital, and overlap a lot.

The way the process is designed is guaranteed to crunch down the number of submissions received, contending takes considered, and findings produced.

But the GO8 have already had one crack at this. They held a workshop with a large number of experts, and produced a lengthy document, which was swiftly dismissed by the Australian Government.

It isn’t clear that they have learned from their mistake.

[joshfornerwrites]

Navigating the COVID-19 Reality

How our scrolling habits and sources of information are changing amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Editorial by Josh Forner (www.joshforner.com)

In our new reality post-COVID-19, it's easy to get lost in the torrents of information being spewed out from the news and media platforms daily. Figures, graphs, charts, new lingo like “flatten the curve,” and “social distancing;” but one thing that hasn't yet been spoken about in any great depth is people's reactions with their devices.

I – for one – have certainly noticed a heavy increase in my social media use and news scrolling, and I figured that surely, I wasn't alone.

The reason for spending so much time on social media may be obvious to some, as we begin our lives in isolation, it only makes sense that we turn to the most convenient option available to keep in contact with loved ones. Yet, I am one person who is still out at work in the public, and I too see my social media scrolling hit an all-time high.

For me, I presume it is the worry for friends and loved ones, the fear of misinformation penetrating the communities that I am involved with, and certainly a way to release my over-arching worry.

Facts and education are the main reasons behind one Victorian's recent habitual scrolling. AJ - a 51 year-old educator and business owner from Victoria's Grampians region - had strong and immediate reactions to the first news of COVID-19 becoming a problem in Australia.

AJ has a non-functioning adrenal gland which puts her in the highly susceptible group of the population who are immuno-compromised, and therefore have a much higher risk of both contracting the infection, and inevitably dying from it.

“Considering my position, I had to find the hard facts,” she says, “and I feel it is my role as an educator to speak the truth at the time and educate others”

Having not really ever been a news follower, and living in an area with no television reception, AJ had to start her fact-finding mission somewhere, and it just so happened that her husband's PC had the ABC News website as its homepage. “I had to ask him if he trusted ABC News as a source, because I know a lot of these mainstream media outlets are biased towards their own agenda. He said yes, which was good enough for me”

This has led to a daily scroll-and-refresh habit that was never part of her life prior to the virus hitting Australian shores. She says that her social media use has also seen a strong increase during this time.

There has, however, been a resistance to scrolling.

Cara (real name withheld) is a 34 year-old musician and disability support worker from Melbourne's North-East. She claims she has weened off social media due to the concerning responses she was having to the constant blast of coronavirus news.

“I'm hardly looking at my phone any more. I'd been trying to spend less time on it anyway, but I just found [that] reading a million people posting about this virus made me feel pretty shit”

This poses the next invisible casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to be a spike in mental-ill health. The reactions that people are having to the news and the virus in general is usually quite full of anxiety and fear, if not for themselves, for their loved ones that may be susceptible to infection, and the fate of the world as a whole.

It may just be that a social media detox is exactly what the world needs right now, and there are certainly a number of people leading the way in that regard.

“I'm still keeping enough of an eye [on COVID-19 news] that I know what's happening, but not reaching for my phone all the time like I often do out of habit.”

AJ applauds this measure as she delves deeper into the misinformation being spread across these channels, “I'm specifically seeing a lot of negative responses from people on my friends list to a lot of either what I post or what is posted by news outlets,” she says “This forces me to go and investigate some of their previous posts, and anything else they may be contributing about coronavirus, and the non-truth that is being put out there is astonishing.”

“I think it's really bringing out everybody's true colours.”

Paul is a father of 3 in his 40's who up until recently was employed in customer service within the insurance sector. Whereas he left his job voluntarily before the pandemic had hit, he empathises with others who now find themselves in this situation.

“I have been scrolling and refreshing my mailbox at least 10 times daily,” he says in relation to job applications and newsletters which arrive through his email. It extends to social media use as well: “Once I would have been content checking these platforms maybe five times daily each, however now it is up to 15 times, in order to give me the sense of being updated”

It is my belief that the current crisis highlights how much we unfortunately rely on the wrong media to attain our information. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica saga, the spotlight has well and truly been on social media outlets to try and curb the amount of 'fake news' content and 'data skimming' of people's personal information, but COVID-19 has shot that in the foot in two ways:

1. The vast and ultimately unending articles being published with unsubstantiated claims, incorrect figures, concentrating on the wrong factors or even giving the population a premature sense of hope, and;

2. The keyboard warriors spinning whatever information they find interesting, without checking sources or facts against respected publications. Not to mention that Facebook’s algorithms (for one of the many social media platforms) have remained largely unchanged.

“I'm worried that it took so long for us to start taking note of community transmissions,” says AJ, “I want to draw people's attention to this as being the key number. Not the infection rate or the fatality rate, but community transmissions. This means that we don't know where the virus has spread from, and no idea where it goes”

All in all, whatever your reasons for scrolling more often, it is quite apparent that social media is going to have a heavy influence on our lives over the coming months, if we indeed choose that path. Maybe it is time we all took a leaf out of Cara's book and took a more conscious approach to where we get our information, and also to alleviate our minds from both panic and overload.

I've certainly been bickering and arguing with people over quite a few topics related to the virus, including the government's apparent lack of a plan (prior to the rolled out measures over the past few weeks), schools remaining open and people not adhering to physical distancing and isolation requirements in our major cities – particularly those who are still at work in the public. This may be useful to get off my chest, but it does nothing at the overall level but heighten my frustration and destabalise my current mental state, as well as 'poke the bear' for others to retaliate.

One of the silver linings in this whole episode may be that a good chunk of the population begins to re-think the way it uses and relies on social media, however on the downside we know that the spread of farce and misinformation will no doubt expand and deepen as we sink further into the COVID-19 crisis.

[aninvalidusername]

27 March 2021.

[miamikiss03]

‪#Australia #luckiestcountryintheworld #sunseasand #precovid19 #COVID19au #Brisbane #covid19australia #COVIDAPP #QuarantineAndChill #isolate #StaySafeStayHome ‬@miamikissintl #💋 https://www.instagram.com/p/B_yR8UZBnY9/?igshid=hc1716czhblu

[techcon101]

A huge THANK YOU to all tireless #frontliners around the world. Know that you are in our prayers everyday. You have our utmost respect and we will support you in every single way that we can.

[buyziverdokit]

[sonia-d]

Even more neighbours staying home... ~ spot the teddy walk, part 4 - but which is real life?? #stayhomesavelives #stayhomestaysafe #melbourne #teddybears #bearwatching #covid19 #covid19au #creativelockdown #spottheteddy

[lacommunarde]

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A post shared by @lacommunarde

#Repost @guardianaustralia (@get_repost) ・・・ As the death toll from coronavirus in the US climbed toward 10,000, a New York City official warned it could establish temporary burial grounds in city parks. New York is the worst hit US state, with the death toll rising to 4,758 from around 131,000 cases. Its social-distancing guidelines have been extended to 29 April, which means schools and non-essential businesses must stay closed until that date. . . #coronavirus #virus #epidemic #pandemic #covid19 #covid19outbreak #coronavirusoutbreak #disease #diseaseprevention #coronavirussymptoms #covid19symptoms #coronavirusau #covid_19 #covid19outbreak #health #covid19aus #coronavirusepidemic #coronaviruspandemic #australia #covid19au #coronavirusaustralia #coronavirusaus #selfisolation #socialdistancing https://www.instagram.com/p/B-uST1FgxrH/?igshid=14xmuvc9f5a30

[5millionfriends]

New Zealand prime minister @JacindaArdern has announced she and her ministers al New Zealand prime minister @JacindaArdern has announced she and her ministers along with public service CEOs will take a 20% pay cut for six months.

[worldnewsinpictures]

ATAGI now recommends severely immunocompromised individuals receive a third dose of a #COVID19au vaccination. Are we suprised. Keep jabbing until we get it right.... Do you have an opinion on this? Share it! HERE -> https://worldnewsinpictures.com/atagi-recommends-severely-immunocompromised #ATAGI #ATAGICOVID19au #ATAGICOVID19auAre #Share #ShareHERE #recommends #severely #immunocompromised