Items

• 
  2020-04-22

  Humans of Covid-19 AU: Adam Yip

  “At the moment, the news industries are scraping just to find stuff! There isn’t much happening. A lot of my shifts have been ‘Go down to Bondi and see if there’s social distancing happening’, which isn’t really an inventive role, and I stand there scratching my head. I wonder when people will stop wanting to see those images. On the other hand, if we didn’t have the media the pandemic could have been a lot worse, they scared a lot of people into staying home (but also scared a lot of people into panic buying). I’d like to think that next pandemic we have, because there will certainly be more, the government will be more active in the beginning, and have everything ready to go. Also, I hope that people will stop panic buying and being so selfish. The scenes of people fighting over toilet paper are horrible. I’m lucky to be in photojournalism though because a lot of other freelance photographers are really suffering at the moment. I used to do lots of portrait shots, but haven’t done one in a while.” Instagram post on Adam Yip, photojournalist, and his experience during the pandemic, which was created by a psychology student living in Melbourne who was interested to hear about how COVID-19 was impacting on different peoples’ lives.
• 
  2020-04-22

  Humans of Covid-19 AU: Sumeyya

  “Last year I went overseas to work in Turkey. After my return, I was diagnosed with cancer so I couldn't go back to work. Since last year, my life has basically been under lockdown, so nothing very new to me. I just do home things most of the time, such as research, reading, art and walks. I’m really looking forward to being free again. As painful as this pandemic is for many people, we needed this. Everyone is becoming very selfish. Everything has become about the dollar and money, rather than looking around and appreciating life around them. But at the end, they will be miserable because they didn’t really enjoy life. Overseas is like another world, especially in poor countries. But no one stops to think about how these people are surviving. Ramaddan is in a few days' time. There is a mixture of excitement and nervousness. It will be hard because we can’t visit friends and family, or have meals together with lots of people. But a lot of people are working on keeping it positive. This year we can pray just with our family, and it is still rewarding. As hard as this time is, we are going to be part of history!” Instagram post on Sumeyya, student, blogger & model, and her experience during the pandemic, which was created by a psychology student living in Melbourne who was interested to hear about how COVID-19 was impacting on different peoples’ lives.
• 
  2020-04-22

  Jan Fran- Text From Facebook Post

  I have included Jan Fran’s name in this only because the facebook post was public and she is an established political commentator, but I was somewhat anxious about publishing her words in this way. When I first saw this facebook post it honestly probably took me about a week to get over my sheer rage at the amount of money Jeff Bezos has personally made profiting from the pandemic, which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for that fact that his personal wealth is so staggeringly incomprehensible already. I read the other day that he has pledged a billion dollars to charities in the wake of coronavirus, which is just under a third of his personal wealth. How is it that one man can accept brownie points for donating a billion dollars in a context when he can justify keeping nearly two billion dollars in personal wealth while income inequality is a driving force in the deaths of over a hundred thousand people in his own country alone. How can anyone can claim to have ‘earned’ or ‘deserve’ such a staggering amount of money in a world rocked by a global pandemic is just so incomprehensible. Jan’s point about this false trade-off between the health of the economy and safety, which is made on so many levels above and beyond public health in a pandemic (because funding free education is bad for the economy rather than billionaires) is so striking, and I can only hope there are enough people who are more disgusted with the two billion dollars Jeff Bezos decided to keep than there are wanting to pat him on the back for donating the one billion.