I hope everybody is safe, healthy, and calm.
Nothing is the same. We are amid a global pandemic and an economic crisis of unprecedented-in-our-lifetimes proportions. Everybody's life has or will be affected, though clearly some households much more than others. It's been a very sudden crisis in how a disease only detected in November spread around the world, catching individuals and governments by surprise and woefully unprepared. But it's also a slow-moving crisis in the sense that many of the health and economic consequences are still to come and hard to predict. Governments are now rushing to adopt historically extraordinary measures that would have been unimaginable just weeks or even days ago.
Societies have been forced to face a truly unpleasant tradeoff: the need to strike a balance between applying ever-stricter social distancing measures -- that we know impose very high economic and social costs -- or let the rate of progression of the disease rise to levels that would overwhelm the health sector. Society could perhaps lessen the immediate economic costs by using less social distancing, but this risks faster infections and more deaths, particularly among the more vulnerable. From what is being said now, we must, unfortunately, continue to make such choices not just for the next several weeks, but possibly for many months or more than a year. Only when there's sufficient herd immunity in the population to slow the spread, either because we've developed a vaccine and/or because a high enough fraction of the population has become infected and recovered to acquire natural immunity, will the social distancing measures be relaxed.
This is all truly terrible but we do ourselves and others no favors by despairing. We must adapt to the circumstances to try to lower the health, social and economic consequences of these events. We must try to protect and improve our lives and that of others, particularly the most vulnerable. We need to find ways to remain employed and engaged in our studies.
We'll have our first 'virtual classroom' meeting on Thursday at 1:10 pm time. The college understands that large numbers of you may only have shared access to a computer at home, may have limited access to internet, and/or that it may be quite difficult to find a 'private space' to participate in synchronous activities. Still, administrators and faculty also feel that it is important for students to get the sense of continuity and shared purpose that comes from synchronous activities, and continue to carve out certain hours of the week for learning. So they have insisted that faculty maintain class meetings. I'll hold these meetings (perhaps not always a full class-length) but I will also make it possible for anyone who cannot attend to complete the course just as successfully.
I'm still rethinking the course and learning to use new online learning tools. A few things to keep in mind:
I hope to see or at least hear many of you virtually Thursday 1:10pm. Details in a separate post.
Nothing is the same. We are amid a global pandemic and an economic crisis of unprecedented-in-our-lifetimes proportions. Everybody's life has or will be affected, though clearly some households much more than others. It's been a very sudden crisis in how a disease only detected in November spread around the world, catching individuals and governments by surprise and woefully unprepared. But it's also a slow-moving crisis in the sense that many of the health and economic consequences are still to come and hard to predict. Governments are now rushing to adopt historically extraordinary measures that would have been unimaginable just weeks or even days ago.
Societies have been forced to face a truly unpleasant tradeoff: the need to strike a balance between applying ever-stricter social distancing measures -- that we know impose very high economic and social costs -- or let the rate of progression of the disease rise to levels that would overwhelm the health sector. Society could perhaps lessen the immediate economic costs by using less social distancing, but this risks faster infections and more deaths, particularly among the more vulnerable. From what is being said now, we must, unfortunately, continue to make such choices not just for the next several weeks, but possibly for many months or more than a year. Only when there's sufficient herd immunity in the population to slow the spread, either because we've developed a vaccine and/or because a high enough fraction of the population has become infected and recovered to acquire natural immunity, will the social distancing measures be relaxed.
This is all truly terrible but we do ourselves and others no favors by despairing. We must adapt to the circumstances to try to lower the health, social and economic consequences of these events. We must try to protect and improve our lives and that of others, particularly the most vulnerable. We need to find ways to remain employed and engaged in our studies.
We'll have our first 'virtual classroom' meeting on Thursday at 1:10 pm time. The college understands that large numbers of you may only have shared access to a computer at home, may have limited access to internet, and/or that it may be quite difficult to find a 'private space' to participate in synchronous activities. Still, administrators and faculty also feel that it is important for students to get the sense of continuity and shared purpose that comes from synchronous activities, and continue to carve out certain hours of the week for learning. So they have insisted that faculty maintain class meetings. I'll hold these meetings (perhaps not always a full class-length) but I will also make it possible for anyone who cannot attend to complete the course just as successfully.
I'm still rethinking the course and learning to use new online learning tools. A few things to keep in mind:
- Relax: do not worry about your grades. Everybody understands these are extraordinary times and many students are facing suddenly much more complicated lives. We will move toward flexible online assessments (including for example participation in simple online discussions with fewer hard deadlines) and less high-stakes exams. While we will plan for several 'synchronous' activities such as moblab games and zoom meetings, don't worry if you miss some of these sessions, there will be other ways to show your participation. I'll grade generously and flexibly and the college has already indicated that they will allow more CR/NC and incompletes that can be made up in later semesters for those who cannot complete work now. Nobody will fail this course so long as you stay engaged (and if you cannot stay engaged write to me and we'll consider the possibilities together)
- Economics 100 in the time of Covid-19: I plan to spend most of the remaining semester discussing the evolving economics consequences of this global pandemic, learning economics along the way. Since many of you would have been following the news anyway this should make it more easy and interesting to follow. There are so many questions that can be asked and at least partially answered using economics frameworks, taken from the book and elsewhere (but also perhaps 'textbook' frameworks that now need to be discarded): How will different individuals and firms be differentially impacted, how are supply and demand shocks being propagated through the economy, how bad will things get, how quickly will the economy recover? What are the monetary and fiscal policy responses that have been offered, or may still be offered? Should the government subsidize, finance or bailout small and large firms that lost business? Where/how to draw the line? Are the proposed cash handouts to all Americans sufficient or properly targeted? How do private and public interest responses diverge, how are private markets help or a hindrance in times of national and global emergency? Has public goods financing been adequate or not? Could a more targeted data-driven policy lower the costs to the economy? What are those policies? Will country governments coordinate policies efficiently, or expense of each other. We can try to answer these and many other questions as we learn some interesting economic lessons along the way.
- Have a little patience: No HW due this week. Assignments that are still listed on Mindtap will go away or change soon. Give me a bit of time to refresh things with new content and figure out how to use some online tools. I'm preparing an easy to follow blog and news feed to keep track of evolving stories and discussion topics, and I'm hoping to use threaded online discussions (that you can do just as easily from your phone or laptop). These will become part of your expanded participation grade. I haven't forgotten your midterm exams. I've posted multiple-choice scores and rest coming soon.
- Speak up: With everything changing so rapidly, and everyone impacted in very different ways, it's important to broaden the discussion and be open interesting ideas and differing perspectives. Please take the initiative to speak up in the virtual classroom, and/or send me your ideas and questions (I'll be quite explicit in asking for these).
I hope to see or at least hear many of you virtually Thursday 1:10pm. Details in a separate post.
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