National Emergency

The president just declared a national emergency, waiving a lot of regulations, and is telling every hospital to activate their disaster plan. He claims testing will be greatly expanded, but only to people with certain symptoms. Anthony Fauci, head of the NIH, referred to the goal of flattening the curve. They also waived interest on federal student loans until further notice, and the government is purchasing oil reserves while prices are low right now.

It sounds like some new drive-through testing centers will be in Wal-Mart and Target parking lots - as if they weren't already a mess 😂

Here's what bothered me about this press conference: many people came to the podium to speak, and they all gripped the sides of the lectern. Stop touching everything! Some people even shook hands! (One did the elbow-bump.) I saw a guy in the background scratching his face.

During his speech, Trump said "this will pass through," and later that "it will wash through, it will flow through," as told to him by "doctors," and that he thinks in a few weeks that will prove true. Then later, talking about the effects of the disease, kept saying elderly people "have not done well." Really reassuring. When asked about the known infected person he came in contact with recently (leading others in his party to self-isolate for 14 days), he said he had no symptoms and would not be isolating. The point of self-isolating is to see if you develop symptoms within the 14 days, so... good luck, White House staffers.

Also, schools in my entire state are closed now. That's good, it was being done district by district (or county, in my case), it's better to have a blanket decision. We also learned today that my student business program will not be continuing for this year - there is just no good way to do it virtually in a way that everyone would be able to participate. We're meeting with our student leadership team tonight to break the news to them, and hopefully something can be done to at least culminate the program - we should find out more in the coming weeks.

The last time I saw some of my students - probably the last time I'll ever see most of them, as many will be graduating and going to college.