The training UNH students received in the telehealth lab, and the equipment UNH has been able to share with area healthcare providers, is making a difference for those who might otherwise not be able to get to a doctor.

Alison Christians ’15 was halfway through teaching “The Great Gatsby” to her sophomore English class at Exeter High School when she got the email that would change the course of the school year: on Monday, we will be transitioning to online learning. It was Friday afternoon.

For teachers like Christians, across the state and country, the sharp swerve to a new normal meant pausing learning as their students knew it, and rebuilding that community one laptop at a time.

Even as UNH’s faculty members conduct their spring semester classes online, providing students with a much-needed sense of normalcy, other members of the university community are coming together to meet the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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According to Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey School, things that were once weekly events in rural parts of American, such as cookouts and bingo nights, are suddenly taboo. He states that "rural people are reliant on their neighbors and have more confidence and trust in their neighbors. Now you have people who are supposed to self-isolate themselves. What does that mean when people you depend on, in order to help you, are going to put themselves and their families at risk?

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We’re all in this together, Wildcats. We can’t wait for all the great things we’ll do together this semester.

Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey School, says social distancing looks different in rural communities than it does in urban ones such as New York City. He states that these rural communities are used to depending on each other to keep their families and businesses alive, and now that governors are enacting stay-at-home policies, they are not sure what to do. Few of these communities have seen actual cases of COVID-19 and are urging their local leaders to return to a sense of normalcy.

Numbers released by the Census Bureau and analyzed by researchers at the Carsey School show that the United States could be heading towards its first annual population decline in history. This decline was first noticed between July 2018 and July 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit America. Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey School, says that while our population is still growing right now, albeit slower than normal, this could change given the unknown extent of the ongoing pandemic.