The iSchool's Informatics program has lost one of its finest students. Casey Tran, UW sophomore and an officer in the iSchool’s Undergraduate Association, was a victim of cyber bullying, and took his own life. We'll remember him later today in INFO415 and there is a special iSchool/Hall Health session later this afternoon. He was not one of my students, but my heart goes out to all those who knew him, and who worked with him.

This marks the end of my seventh week of isolation.

The coronavirus keeps presenting us with information that we have no explanation for.

It has been a harrowing month. All but essential businesses are closed, college and university campuses as well as our museums and public libraries have closed their physical locations and invite us to meet them online. Young or old, if you did not know how to operate a computer before the coronavirus struck, you will probably have learned by now how to use applications like FaceTime and Zoom.

I like to think of myself as a student, even when I am being called a teacher. As COVID-19 has shown all of us, there is simply so much that we do not know and cannot control. It has been at once painful and humbling that the previous planning work done to prepare for a pandemic was abandoned by the current administration several years ago. As a recent New York Times chronicle of this pandemic shows, we lost at least two months in sounding the criticality of what we now face, of creating a test and a process for mass testing, and to assemble the supplies and technology we need to fight for lives.

It appears that the president has finally got it — a lot of people are going to die, and it will get worse before it gets better. He has somewhat reluctantly used powers vested in him by the Defense Production Act, and seemed bewildered on Monday that states were having to vie against one another and against FEMA as well, when trying to purchase desperately needed supplies for medical personnel and to treat COVID-19 patients.

The pandemic highlights the best among all of us, whether we are talking about the early leadership of Jay Inslee in Washington State, or the medical professionals and first responders who go to work every day — or the leadership on display this past week by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The image is from yesterday’s address to the National Guard that Cuomo made. If you haven’t seen it, you might want to watch it and be lifted up, not just by the sheer power of his words, but by the fact that — like every great leader — both his head and his heart are engaged.

I have been self-isolating since the day after I taught my last university class on March 6. All of Washington State is now under executive order to do so, even as some argue the definition of an “essential service.” I believe that Governor Inslee waited perhaps too long to do so, as today we are looking at the deadliest day in reported coronavirus deaths in this country and in several others as well.

In Washington D.C., two of the three branches of government are shaping and reshaping the largest relief package ever created in the history of this country, targeted at workers and families, at small and medium sized businesses, but also in the form of loans to large corporations. That financial relief cannot come soon enough.

Today marks 15 days since I was last in the classroom in front of students. I’ve been sheltering in place since March 6, participating in meetings via videoconferencing and completing work that will result in the close of the winter quarter today. I have made a plan to live and work this way until June out of an abundance of caution.

We may never know what it was that caught the president’s attention and made him a believer. He now understands that COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in our country, and that thousands have been tested and found to be infected. Thousands will die. This is a frighteningly different phenomenon than the annual flu season. And, finally, all the powers and resources of the federal government are being marshaled on behalf of its citizens.