Oliver Kirchkamp

Teaching and Research with SARS-CoV-2

Please allow me some remarks regarding teaching and research during a pandemic.

Currently, our health system is under an enormous strain. Working day in and day out in protective clothing in understaffed emergency units deserves our respect and should not be taken for granted. Academics should try to understand the consequences their actions have on our health system. We should act responsibly. We should not try to find loopholes that would allow us to carry on with routines that have become a danger to the public.
I am grateful to the colleagues (many of them young academics) who, during the past months, have successfully developed safe and digital academic events. These colleagues have made and are still making a very important contribution to our academic life. They help us to keep in touch. They help us to carry on with our work in a responsible way. Thank you!
During the last months I have learnt to appreciate digital academic events. I have difficulties understanding colleagues who cling to now dangerous and out of date behavior, who refuse to engage in safe and responsible digital alternatives. I find it dangerous when these colleages point to others who “do the same”. It does not help if individual members of a society excuse their own behaviour, if they claim that the negative externality generated by them is small in comparison to the negative externality generated by all others.
The behaviour of others never justifies own choices. A society which follows the inefficient example of their neighbours enters a spiral of increasingly inefficient choices. We must make responsible and independent and safe choices. We must help reducing the burden we impose on our health system. We must do this, even if we have to adjust our routines. We must do this, even if our own individual contribution is small.
Our health system is under an enormous strain. Academics must help reducing this strain.

I do thank everybody who cooperates and who supports the efforts of the academic community to teach and to do research in a safe way. I do realise that adjusting routines is inconvenient. New formats are “not the same” as old formats. New formats are often surprisingly better. I also thank all my colleagues who, with their creativity and with their inspiration, help us to deal with the pandemic.

Digital hospitality among researchers is essential. I am most grateful to the MPI for collective goods for their hospitality and for their inspiring digital activities during the pandemic. I also enjoy the following seminar series in my field:

Here are some contributions from researchers in my field which relate to the pandemic and which I find interesting:

Here are some links regarding the spread of the infection. This is not strictly economics, but since economic arguments on how to deal with the pandemic are often based on forecasts, a good model of the spread of the infection is key: