This has been a very challenging week, for sure, as institutions around the world, including in our own country, have implemented coronavirus-containment measures–and that includes cancelling a lot of events. As for my own institution, Western Washington University, I’m pleased that it is doing the sensible thing with isolation procedures for the entire community of students, faculty, staff. 

Certainly, the situation is changing daily, and in a month, much less two, things will be very different. What’s been happening recently just highlights this world of uncertainty and risk in which we live. There are ways to reduce risk, though, and build adaptive capacity and resilience. This is especially important around food, and I’ve included a link to an article on a “catastrophe” happening in our own corner of the world—the Pacific Northwest, and what we could due to plan for it: Our Pacific Northwest–food in times of disaster (downloadable from WWU).

Read it, if you like, that’s all part of being informed (the “I” in WISE). But, if academic stories is not your thing, try this for a light-hearted response to coronavirus: Quarantined Italians sing to coronavirus.

I know that information overload is a problem (a very FoodWISE theme), and that’s what we’re living with right now. But, I do think that information is very powerful, and it’s useful, too! I am quite interested, for example, in these articles.

• Decline of new cases in China: Cases on the decline
• How the epidemic can be brought under control with a stringent enough response, giving us: Lessons on containment
• Monitoring closely what’s happening in our own corner of the world: Coronavirus testing results (Whatcom County)

Onward!