COVID-19

Featured image: New Zealand hits a 95% chance of eliminating coronavirus – but we predict new cases will emerge

New Zealand hits a 95% chance of eliminating coronavirus – but we predict new cases will emerge

Guest Author • Jun 05, 2020

Michael Plank, University of Canterbury; Alex James, University of Canterbury; Audrey Lustig, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research; Nicholas Steyn; Rachelle Binny, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, and Shaun Hendy There is now a 95% chance COVID-19 has been eliminated in New Zealand, according to our modelling, based on official … Read More

Featured image: New Zealand’s COVID-19 Tracer app won’t help open a ‘travel bubble’ with Australia anytime soon

New Zealand’s COVID-19 Tracer app won’t help open a ‘travel bubble’ with Australia anytime soon

Guest Author • May 21, 2020

Mahmoud Elkhodr, CQUniversity Australia New Zealanders finally have access to the government’s new tracing app to help people monitor their movements as lockdown continues to ease. As businesses can now open, the NZ COVID Tracer app allows people to keep a register of the places they visit. This “digital diary” can be used to contact people if it finds … Read More

Featured image: Recession hits Māori and Pasifika harder. They must be part of planning New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery

Recession hits Māori and Pasifika harder. They must be part of planning New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery

Guest Author • May 20, 2020

Tahu Kukutai, University of Waikato; Helen Moewaka Barnes, Massey University; Tim McCreanor, Massey University, and Tracey Mcintosh As schools and businesses reopen and attention shifts to the longer-term repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical that Māori be involved in decision making more equitably than has so far happened. The failure to include Māori in strategy discussions throughout the … Read More

Featured image: Experts are back in fashion – now more than ever we need to question them

Experts are back in fashion – now more than ever we need to question them

Guest Author • May 18, 2020

Richard Shaw, Massey University Once upon a very different time, British cabinet minister Michael Gove sneered that “people have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.” But that was then and this is now. One or two obvious exceptions aside, we are all in … Read More

Featured image: Law in order?

Law in order?

Guest Author • May 14, 2020

Nik Green Governments around the world have restricted the activities of their citizens in the fight against COVID-19 under various laws and powers. Over the past couple of weeks, the legality of the restrictions New Zealand has put in place has been questioned by law professors Claudia Geiringer and Andrew Geddis, and the … Read More

Featured image: The pause that depresses

The pause that depresses

Guest Author • May 11, 2020

Murray Sherwin The die is cast. We won’t see the official numbers for quite a while, but it is already apparent that New Zealand is headed into the sharpest and deepest recession in 100 years. We know we will experience unemployment at, and perhaps above, levels not seen since the late 1980s, company failures and large income losses across the … Read More

Featured image: Fleas to flu to coronavirus: how ‘death ships’ spread disease through the ages

Fleas to flu to coronavirus: how ‘death ships’ spread disease through the ages

Guest Author • May 11, 2020

Joy Damousi, Australian Catholic University One of the haunting images of this pandemic will be stationary cruise ships – deadly carriers of COVID-19 – at anchor in harbours and unwanted. Docked in ports and feared. The news of the dramatic spread of the virus on the Diamond Princess from early February made the news real for many Australians who’d … Read More

Featured image: Past pandemics show how coronavirus budgets can drive faster economic recovery

Past pandemics show how coronavirus budgets can drive faster economic recovery

Guest Author • May 08, 2020

Ilan Noy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington With New Zealand’s May 14 budget expected to chart the way out of the economic crisis, Finance Minister Grant Robertson should be looking to the past as well as the future. Finance ministers elsewhere are facing similar decisions, many even more constrained than New Zealand’s. But the common claim that … Read More

Featured image: A stoat trappers’ guide to elimination

A stoat trappers’ guide to elimination

Guest Author • May 08, 2020

Dave Heatley New Zealanders have a lot of experience with islands and unwanted organisms – keeping them away, learning to live with them, and – in just a few cases – eliminating them. What can that experience tell us about plans to eliminate COVID-19? I can’t claim any expertise on polio, measles, Mycoplasma bovis or thar. But I do … Read More