It's not The Week That Was without lots of COVID coverage, and this week is no different. This week it's supplemented with a guide for "finfluencers", Facebook being shutdown in Germany and a giant 3D cat in Tokyo. Enjoy the read.
As we go to press, the pandemic news from Australia isn’t getting any better. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting a “worrying jump in numbers” and the NSW government has announced that residents must stay within 10km of their home. The Herald has this interactive guide to help residents find what is within that radius of their home. Let’s hope they get this under control sooner than later.
The PM telling the Herald that there will be moves to address the shortage of workers in the hospitality sector in the “not too distant future” caught our eye. As did the stat that pre-Covid, New Zealand's hospitality industry was made up of between 25-30 per cent of migrant workers but now this was down to about 15 per cent.
With the borders effectively closed the issue of skills in many sectors is one we will continue to read about for some time to come.
In better news from New Zealand Doctor, scientists at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington have used real-world samples to confirm the 98.7 percent accuracy of a saliva test for COVID-19. This is the first, and currently the only, COVID-19 saliva test to be diagnostically validated in Aotearoa New Zealand.
And in a dose of realism the Associate Professor Pitman stresses that COVID tests are going to be part of our lives for years to come.
“This virus isn’t going away, and eventually we’re going to open our borders. What we need is a suite of highly accurate, diagnostically validated saliva tests for SARS-CoV-2.”
“We’re going to need these tests in our workplaces to give people peace of mind at work, at our borders to enable people to travel, and within our communities to gauge any outbreaks. The more tools we have in our toolbox to fight this and keep New Zealand safe, the better.”
At the end of June, the Financial Markets Authority released a guideto talking about money online. The key message for consumers is:
Be wary of what you see online. Social media chatter or posts by social media influencers are no substitute for professional financial advice. Some influencers are paid to promote financial products or services. This should be properly disclosed to you – but may not always be.
For "influencers" it’s:
It’s fine to talk about financial matters online, as long as you keep it general. It’s when you start getting into recommending particular products or telling individuals what to do, that you may be giving regulated financial advice.
Reuters reports that German government organisations have until the end of the year to close their Facebook pages after the data protection commissioner found the social network had failed to change its practices to comply with German and European privacy laws.
The report goes on to say that Clubhouse, TikTok and Instagram have similar policies.
This has important implications for Facebook and for the German Government. Their page has over one million followers and is used to communicate valuable information.
Backlinko, an SEO company, analysed 3.6 billion articles to understand what makes evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that continues to get shares and likes over time.
You can read the full article here. In summary:
Brickit is a solution for that pile of mismatched Lego bricks sitting in boxes and on the carpet. Just scan and the app gives you all manner of ideas of what you can build. Hours of fun for Lego fans of all ages.
In Tokyo a giant animated cat has been developed to showcase a new curved LED digital sign. The new resident cat will appear periodically during other scheduled advertisements after it wakes at 7am, then fall asleep just before the sign is scheduled to turn off at 1am. The cat has been generating media interest across the world.
