Category Archives: Body & Mind

New Zealand is COVID-19 Free

After a very well managed shutdown of the country, New Zealand is free of COVID-19 and people are able to live as they did before. The country had a strict, vast, and quick reaction to COVID-19 showing up in the nation and it’s paid off. Starting today New Zealanders are able to go gyms, work, parks, or wherever thanks to the efforts in following the government’s public safety rules. It’s great to see another nation get through the pandemic.

Ardern has drawn global headlines and praise from the World Health Organization for her government’s approach to the virus, with a strict and cautious approach that appears to have paid off. On 25 March she locked down the country for four weeks – requiring that most New Zealanders remained at home most of the time – before gradually easing restrictions.

…

“Our collective results I think speak for ourselves,” Ardern said. “This was what the sacrifice of our team of five million was for – to keep one another safe and to keep one another well.” She has regularly referred to New Zealanders as a “team of five million” in an effort to unite people and encourage them to follow her government’s rules to curb the virus’ spread

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Feeling Lonely? Head to the Virus Cafe

coffee

Feeling lonely and not getting out due to the pandemic? Head over to the virtual virus cafe where you can connect with other nice people on the internet and chat for a little bit. The creator clearly wants people to connect in an impromptu but meaningful way while we are all physically distant from one another. Here’s what the creator says about their creation:

Hey folks! I built Virus Cafe to help you make a friend in 2 minutes! My goal is to help people stuck indoors because of COVID-19 (or police curfews) to make meaningful connections with strangers.

Here’s how it works:

1. You are matched with a random partner for a video chat

2. You’re given a deep question to discuss. You have 2 minutes!

3. The only rule is: no small talk!

Small talk is the worst and I’m on a mission to eradicate it. I’ve expertly crafted over 200 questions designed to stimulate good conversation and skip past the boring introductions.

Here are a few samples:

– When in your life have you been the happiest?

– What would you be willing to die for?

– What is the biggest lie you’ve told without getting caught?

– What is a belief you had as a child that you no longer have?

– What human emotion do you fear the most?

– If a family member murdered someone, would you report them to the police?

– What absolutely excites you right now?

I hope you use Virus Cafe to meet a new friend and make a deep connection today.

Check it out.
Read more at Hacker News.

Visually Communicating Climate Change

Solar Panel School

Showing people the impact climate change is having on people usually results in rather depressing images. It doesn’t have to be this way, we can show people the great things people are doing to mediate and react to our changing planet. The mission of Climate Visuals is to help journalists to find and use positive imagery about climate change. Images that capture the resiliency of people and places that are withstanding the threats of environmental damage. We have the solutions to climate change, so let’s show those solutions to the world.

The first Climate Visuals report ‘Climate Visuals: Seven principles for visual climate change communication (based on international social research)’ summarises research with members of the public in three nations.

The research combined two different methods. Four structured discussion groups (with a total of 32 citizens) were held: two in London, and two in Berlin. Participants responded to dozens of climate images, engaging in detailed discussions about what they saw. Following this in-depth research, an international online survey of 3,014 people was conducted, with participants split equally between the UK, Germany and the US.

The survey allowed us to test a smaller number of images with a much larger number of people. Further details on the methodology can be found in the separate appendix document below.

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This Microbe Stops Malaria Transmission

Forest

Researchers discovered that one microbe can effectively stop malaria transmission amongst mosquitoes, and therefore amongst humans. This revelation can have a great impact on efforts to stop the spread of the disease. Microsporidia is a microbe found on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya where it was discovered that the mosquitoes in the area didn’t carry malaria, which is exceptional since neighbouring populations were carriers. The research team deduced that one specific microbe blocked the acquisition and spread of malaria.

“The data we have so far suggest it is 100% blockage, it’s a very severe blockage of malaria,” Dr Jeremy Herren, from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) in Kenya told the BBC.
He added: “It will come as a quite a surprise. I think people will find that a real big breakthrough.”
More than 400,000 people are killed by malaria each year, most of them children under the age of five.
While huge progress has been made through the use of bed nets and spraying homes with insecticide, this has stalled in recent years. It is widely agreed new tools are needed to tackle malaria.

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Understanding the Anti-Reality Narrative in America

Those of us who have been arguing for sustainable growth and a carbon neutral economy for years know that people don’t listen; in fact people argue against the very concept to their own detriment. The response to these climate change deniers and malicious actors was to ty to change their mind by showing the science, it didn’t work. The same thing is now happening with reactions to the necessity to stay at home to stop the spread of COVID-19. So what do we do when people are actively arguing against what reality has made plain? Over at The New Republic they have some ideas.

Coronavirus denialism and climate denialism aren’t the product of skeptical masses but disingenuous elites. Investigative journalist Lisa Graves pointed out recently in The New York Times that the anti-shutdown protests—like the Tea Party, and like much of the Koch-funded climate denialism—embody a mix of genuine outrage and dark money astroturf funneling that rages toward politically advantageous targets. The protests’ benefactors are dutifully social distancing for fear of getting sick themselves but want everyone else back to work to appease the stock market. Fossil fuel companies lobbied Congress and paid climate deniers in places like the Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation to spew junk science on cable news, clouding the conversation enough to delay any meaningful action. It’s a similar tactic to that deployed by the Koch brothers in 2009, fearing that a climate bill would be passed: To head it off, they trained Americans for Prosperity’s guns on so-called RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) who thought about supporting it, clouding town halls, congressional offices, and airwaves with doubts about whether the earth was warming at all. If you were a Republican politician at some point in the last decade, it very literally paid to be a climate denier.

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