One of the many things we can look forward to once everyone is vaccinated is the possibility that we do our quarantine at home rather than in the government designated hotels and quarantine stations.

ZG: 8

If all goes according to plan, we will be seeing a lot more of home quarantine.

Read More

There are now some cases recorded of people acquiring COVID-19 even though they are fully vaccinated. Such breakthrough infections, where the virus breaks through the protective layer of the vaccine, are rare but they cannot be discounted.

ZG: 5

This is of increasing concern to a population already worried about the whole business of vaccination.

Read More

VLP stands for ‘virus-like particle’. This particle is a molecule that mimics a virus, thus producing the required immune response. It is perfectly safe because it has no actual viral material in it and is not infectious.

ZG: 3

Very technical jargon. While we have come to grips with the names and types of a number of vaccines, we may have reached out limit.

Read More

There is a running joke in which animals are referred to as ‘puppies’, the kind of puppy being designated by something you associate with the animal. It is jokingly affectionate. So a flying fox is a sky puppy. But to call a snake a hiss puppy seems quite a stretch in terms of affectionate humour.

ZG: 5

This appealing snake is quite worthy of being called a hiss puppy!

If any snake could be called a hiss puppy it is this one. He seems very appealing.

Read More

This is a colloquial shortening of lockdown which may just possibly make us feel better about the whole situation. We can add it to the collection of such jokey ways of referring to the things that dismay us, such as the rona and iso.

ZG: 6

This one is still new to us but catching on fast, and obviously needed to lighten the rigours of the lockdown that is upon us.

Read More

Alongside the development of vaccines there has been the development of treatments for COVID-19. Last year we had remdesivir which inhibits the activity of the virus and reduces recovery time. The drugs dexamethasone and tocilizumab both work as anti-inflammatories. This year we have sotrovimab which is a monoclonal antibody therapy.

ZG: 5

Somehow we don’t get excited about treatments the way we do about vaccines.

Read More

This is a kind of shell company. It produces nothing and does nothing. Its sole function is to raise money on the stock exchange in order to acquire a private company, usually within a limited time frame, which has the effect of making the private company a public company without going through the usual process of an initial pubic offering (IPO).

ZG: 4

A piece of jargon from the finance world which is not going to affect most of us directly.

Read More

This is the selfie that you post online when you have been vaccinated. People indicate their vaccinated status in various creative ways ranging from showing a vaccination card to wearing a crown or a mask that says ‘I’m vaccinated’ or the like. It has become so common that it has been shortened to vaxxie.

ZG: 9

It’s all about the vaccination rate at the moment and this seems like a way in which people can encourage each other to get vexed.

Read More

Mask shaming results from not following the norm – wearing or not wearing masks. In America there are some comments about mask vigilantes as well.

ZG: 6

There is increased sensitivity in the community about the issue of mask wearing. Now that it is mandatory outside we can all take note of the people who still try to avoid it.

Read More

Apparently in Europe and Canada the vaccine has gone by the name of Vaxzevria and there is concern that, if we do get to the stage of vaccine certificates or passports, the name AstraZeneca will not be recognised overseas.

ZG: 5

This will become more meaningful to us when we can travel again.

Read More

This is the carbon which is sequestered by coastal ecosystems and sea grasses. Apparently a good stand of mangroves can sequester more carbon that a terrestrial forest of similar size.

ZG: 7

This is one of the many ideas being put forward now as a strategy to deal with climate change.

Read More

This is a form of anxiety which does not prevent you from functioning in your job, home life, etc. Indeed it drives you on to perform even better than others while at the same time masking your underlying anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.

ZG: 5

While the subject of much analysis on the internet, it does not have general currency.

Read More

This is the vaccination that you are required to have as part of your job. Employers have been saying that they cannot legally force their staff to get vaccinated. Only the federal government has the power to make it mandatory.

ZG: 8

This is likely to be a big issue in the months to come.

Read More

Just as biohacking is the employment of various techniques to improve the functioning of the body, so neuorhacking is the employment of various techniques to improve the functioning of the mind. A hack in this context is a clever if not necessarily orthodox solution to a problem, a general meaning which derives from computer use.

ZG: 4

This is part of the jargon of a small but dedicated group of people.

Read More

In the official jargon of the NSW government this is singles social bubble. Victoria was ahead of NSW in the creation of bubbles, devising the intimate bubble for people in a romantic relationship and the single social bubble for the person who lives alone.

ZG: 8

There is a lot of discussion of the singles bubble at the moment in NSW as it becomes clear that lockdown is with us for a while and the rules governing this bubble need to be clear.

Read More

The word, a blend of trash and fashion, was coined in New Zealand in 2004 for high-art objects made from trash which were part of a fashion show called Trash to Fashion. Trashion fits into the found-object genre of art where junk and debris is turned into something with artistic value.

ZG: 6

The term is part of fashion jargon and relatively new, but now that it is entering the mainstream we will become more familiar with it.

Read More

The Victorian health minister has announced that his state has a COVID baby boom happening. There was some speculation that this would be one of the outcomes of lockdown restrictions.

ZG: 5

This is another marker of our progress through the pandemic.

Read More

This is a new strain of the COVID-19 virus appearing in the UK. It is thought to be twice as contagious as the delta variant. And if you are wondering what happened to the other letters of the Greek alphabet, they were allocated to various variants of interest which did not turn out to be variants of concern.

ZG: 7

We are still focused on the delta variant but we have lambda and beyond to consider.

Read More

Once we extended literacy to mean the reading of the jargon and underlying assumptions of a particular field of study the way was open for a number of different kinds of literacy. Computer literacy was among the first but it was followed by critical literacy, emotional literacy, and then health literacy. Death literacy is most closely modelled on health literacy.

ZG: 5

While there is an increasing interest in ways of approaching death and dying, this is not a term that has general currency.

Read More

It is common enough in summer to see a cumulonimbus cloud with a top flattened like an anvil. This is because the cloud has reached the ceiling of the troposphere where it is usually held, but some energetic storms can punch through the troposphere ceiling and enter the stratosphere where the cloud cools to below freezing.

ZG: 5

This is a weather phenomenon that may await us.

This is one for the people who are fascinated by clouds, although we should all perhaps register it as another indicator of climate change.

Read More