The new hybrid office is an office in a business in which the staff spend part of their time working remotely, usually at home, and part of their time in the company office.

ZG: 8

The return to work is upon us so how this is to be managed and what the new work patterns will be is of great concern. It is also possible that nothing will be gained from the 2020 work experience and life will be just as it was before.

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The discussion about the effectiveness of wearing masks to stop the spread of COVID-19 produced images of the cough cloud. There was debate about how far the cough cloud, the spray of tiny droplets emitted from someone’s mouth when they coughed, would carry.

ZG: 6

The image of the cough cloud produced a certain nervousness in the community as we became aware that we were wearing masks to protect ourselves, certainly, but mostly to protect others from our coughing.

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Among the shortened forms giving us a sense of familiarity with COVID-19 and all its ways, there is sanny or hanny san for hand sanitiser, segro for segregation, and quarry or quazza for quarantine.

ZG: 7

None of these are as common as iso and the rona but they help to create an Aussie pandemic experience.

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This is a term that has emerged in the rules and restrictions on behaviour governed by Covid-19. You are allowed to dance, but only in the style dubbed subtle dancing.

ZG: 7

Amusing as these terms are, we are going to have to get used to them and live our lives in a vertical and subtle way.

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The new move in clothing choices is coming from the down-market end of tracksuits and loose-fitting tops with no bras, combined with sneakers. Quarantine style maintains comfort as the first requirement of clothing but then tries to dress it up a little.

ZG: 7

There is a theory that we will all be reluctant to give up quarantine style when office life returns to normal.

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These are hotels designed to suit the needs of outpatients regularly attending hospital for treatment but otherwise not in need of hospital accommodation and supervision. During the pandemic these hotels have been used as hotels for the use of people in enforced quarantine.

ZG: 9

Quarantine hotels featured in the Melbourne second wave. The small outbreak in Adelaide alerted us all to the fact that they are called medical-hotels in South Australia.

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These are the stocks that are taking a battering on the stock exchange now that there is the promise of a vaccine, stocks such as ZOOM and Netflix that flourished during the pandemic.

ZG: 5

A bit of stock market jargon but the rollercoaster of the markets has been something for us all to watch during the pandemic so we have observed the successes of the products that appeal during a pandemic.

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Chart Throb was the title of a book by Ben Elton published in 2006. It was a spoof on a reality TV show which judged singing talent and good looks. Now chart throb refers to the election analysts who briefly become TV stars.

ZG: 4

It is American and it will probably have a fleeting currency here and then be forgotten until the next election, but we may start applying the term to our local analysts.

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We became familiar with the term long-haulers back in July for those people who do not seem to recover from COVID-19. Their symptoms continue on, waxing and waning, but never entirely going away. There is now increasing acceptance that this is a very real thing for some people although there is still only speculation as to the causes.

ZG: 7

I suspect that the long COVID sufferers are indeed in it for the long haul and we will be discussing this syndrome for some time to come.

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This was the day that Victorians had anxiously awaited. The end of the lockdown was in sight but a new cluster had suddenly developed and a lot of testing had been done in that area. The suspense built as the results were announced. No new cases and no deaths.

ZG: 7

We have now had a triple doughnut day — the third day of zero cases in Victoria.

This was a fleeting moment in the pandemic history but one that certainly Melburnians will remember.

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It became clear early in the pandemic that tracing and testing was very much hampered by the need to send tests away to a lab for processing. Results might not come back for a couple of days, by which time the person tested might have been walking around as an infectious carrier of the virus for all that time. And so the search began for a rapid testing kit.

ZG: 6

This term may be with us for quite some time since the need to test widely and get results quickly is not going to go away.

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One way of ensuring that mass testing is being carried out is to require employers to test twenty-five per cent of their workforce each week so that, over the period of a month, the entire staff is tested. This is described as surveillance testing.

ZG: 6

There seems to be an attempt to distinguish between sentinel testing which is mass testing of small pockets in the community, and surveillance testing which occurs in workplaces.

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During the lockdown in Victoria, the residents of Melbourne were not allowed to travel into regional Victoria. There were various checkpoints where travellers were stopped and sent back if they had no valid reason for crossing the line.

ZG: 6

Victorians would probably rate this term as having high frequency and significance. The rest of the country is not so concerned with it.

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There are two definitions for wedding puptials. In the first scenario an attendant looks after the impeccably groomed dog which is attending the wedding of its owner, and in the second the dogs are part of an elaborate fundraiser.

ZG: 5

It has novelty value but engages a small section of the population who have fur babies.

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Technology has come to the aid of music students and examiners who can no longer meet to conduct an exam. The students can prepare for a video exam, more correctly known by the AMEB (Australian Music Examinations Board) as a video repertoire exam.

ZG: 5

A concept which is a great significance to the small group of music students undertaking exams at the moment.

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Vaccine diplomacy is a style of diplomacy which is focused on providing aid to countries to assist them in coping with the pandemic now and in obtaining the vaccine when and if it becomes available.

ZG: 7

This is a term that is likely to get more frequent use as we get closer to having a viable vaccine.

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The vaccine-hesitant are the people who are always worried about taking vaccines, even if they go ahead and do it eventually, because they fear a bad reaction.

ZG: 5

I would expect this term to have more frequency at the point where a vaccine may eventuate and people have to make decisions.

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Some fatigues like battle fatigue are recognised psychological neuroses. Lockdown fatigue also has psychological overtones and has been analysed as resulting from the disruption of our routines or habits.

ZG: 9

Given the situation in Victoria this term has had a lot of exposure.

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A character in a movie or TV show will have what is called a race lift (sometimes racelift) when their race or ethnicity is changed in a version derived from the original.

ZG: 7

This is part of the ongoing discussion about issues to do with race, ethnicity and minority status, and so is a significant item in this context.

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The basic version of virtual kidnapping doesn’t involve contact with the supposedly kidnapped person at all, although the ‘kidnapper’ might need to know a bit about them.

ZG: 5

The forms of extortion of money in a digital world seem to be endless.

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