Digital only

With all of Italy under strict quarantine, our civic virtues are being tested, emphasising the social and political dimension of the crisis as many people simply refuse to stay indoors. The fact that Italy has been forced to take such draconic measures says something about how critical the situation has become but also how important social acceptance will be, especially as we can expect this crisis to go on for many months yet.

Today at work, we had our first online meeting which I was grateful for as I am still having a sore throat. At the meeting, an infectious disease physician and teacher in disaster medicine gave a presentation about Covid-19, telling us about how they are working with the epidemic and giving a lot of useful advice about how to balance physical and digital learning activities. However, before the meeting was over, the Swedish government made the announcement that I have been fearing for the last weeks, namely that all higher education will be digital-only starting tomorrow. This will have vast implications for me as I will now have to quickly come up with take-home exams for a number of courses and stop dreaming of the picture above from Capri fifteen years ago...