Ep 010.5 - Alison

Right in Front of My Face

The mission of Right in Front of My Face is to shed light on big things happening right in front of me. I’m coming in hot with a bonus episode because I want to contribute something in this pandemic, and what I feel like I can contribute is staying calm and finding facts. I put out a call on my personal Facebook page to ask if anyone knew an epidemiologist I could interview that might be able to shed some light on what we’re seeing and hearing in the news in Seattle. Within minutes, a good friend of mine connected me with her neighbor Alison Drake, PHd epidemiologist at the UW School of Public Health. While she’s not a Coronovirus expert, she’s an expert on the spread of disease and man, does she know how to read a graph and explain it. It was honestly incredibly refreshing to hear a woman take me through some data - clearly, we need more female voices in leadership but that's a whole other podcast.

In all seriousness, I think my husband put it best when he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘i don’t know’ more times in my life than I have in the last 2 weeks.” As grownups, we’re not accustomed to the answer eluding us, the future being unknown. This quarantine is a foreign land to most of us. I’m a true extrovert meaning when I’m around people it energizes me. To be isolated literally sucks my life force and I’m struggling more this week than last being away from my tribe and network. We are, all of us, desperate for an answer that no one has - when will schools open? When can I go back to work? Are my kids going to be ok? How do I talk to them? All these questions with no answer take a very real mental toll and many I’ve talked to are feeling it psychologically. I have no answers and neither does Alison. But what we do have is the ability to connect and learn. Alison generously answers all the clinical questions as best she can - I hope you can take something of comfort away from this conversation.