“Nobody ever thanks you for saving them from the disease they didn’t know they were going to get.” —WILLIAM FOEGE Smallpox and COVID-19: One pandemic public health leader’s story translates to a new generation Virology Central Within weeks of news of the outbreak in China, the UW Medicine Virology Laboratory was readying itself to deal with the novel coronavirus. And then on Jan. 21, Washington state recorded the first known case in the U.S., and a month later, the first known death. On March 2, the lab—then at the U.S. center of the outbreak—received FDA approval to perform testing and started with about 100 swabbed samples. Over the next two weeks, as the demand ramped up exponentially, the lab raced to increase its capacity—and was soon running about 1,800 tests and finding about 150 infections a day. The staff worked long days, sometimes 18 to 24 hours per shift, to help community leaders and public health officials make sound decisions about how to deal with this health crisis. During the spring, the lab often ran more tests than any other in the country. Only a few laboratories na- tionwide have the people, tools and resources to do this essential work. Until a treatment or therapy is found, testing and containment are at the heart of our nation’s response to the pandemic. Photo by Dennis Wise SUMMER 2020 1 TOGETHER WE WILL With small acts of kindness and big innovations, our community is making a difference and inspiring hope. We’re standing strong individually — and facing this challenge together. JOIN US uw.edu/together VOLUME 31 ONLINE NUMBER 2 magazine.uw.edu SUMMER 2020 JACKIE RUSSO JACKIE Open the door to 8 SMILES, 3,000 MILES sky-high living. A photographer in Mexico City created the virtual teacher Your urban oasis awaits. At portraits in “Screen Gems” (page 38). See how she pulled it off. Mirabella Seattle, we’re proud to offer spacious, beautifully appointed apartments in the heart of Seattle’s South Lake Union district, so that you BRIAN SMALE CURTIS DICKIE CURTIS can retire in style. Fifty years ago, when FORWARD HANDS OFF THE SOAP—BRIEFLY 24 Front and Center smallpox was ravaging 6 Geoff Baird Using hot water and Call for a tour today. With compassion, innovation and empathy, public health leader the developing world, 8 Hope and Resilience soap is keeping you Patty Hayes is always striving to make life safer for us. epidemiologist William 10 Roar of the Crowd By David Volk Foege, ’61, a UW School healthy, but it could 206-254-1441 of Medicine alum, set be hurting your skin. aside the convention- THE HUB A UW Medicine dermatologist gives mirabellaliving.com/seattle 28 al wisdom of mass 13 State of the Art Protein Power us some advice. Professor David Baker’s audacious idea to create new proteins vaccination. Instead, 14 Expert may be the answer to stopping disease—including COVID-19. he predicted where the 18 Infographic By Sally James virus would spread and 20 Research inoculated people where 21 From Washington it made sense instead of 22 Scorecard 30 Unearthed and Retooled vaccinating everyone. 22 Athletics The result? The virus A canoe buried long ago in the mud along the banks of the Green ARCHIVE / HULTON BARR T. JOHN River teaches us a lot about life before non-native settlement. was stopped cold. By Hannelore Sudermann COLUMNS 45 Sketches 46 Media 36 Smallpox Slayer 58 Tribute Before the novel coronavirus, smallpox infected the planet. Then 60 Memorials William Foege, ’61, devised the way to eradicate it from the Earth. THE LAST TIME By Julie Garner WE LOST SPRING UDUB Schools nearby 64 U Book Store closed early after 38 Screen Gems May 1980’s eruption Be it in person or on a screen, this year’s Distinguished Teaching of Mount St. Helens. Award recipients showed exemplary commitment to students. Those seniors never By Quinn Russell Brown got to say goodbye. 4 UW MAGAZINE Mirabella Seattle is a Pacific Retirement Services community and an equal housing opportunity. OPINION AND THOUGHT FROM THE UW FAMILY so early in its course. Our testing and as- sociated scientific efforts have also meant that we are genome-sequencing all of the viruses we detect to track transmission, supporting clinical trials for treatments and vaccines, and contributing to essen- tially every conceivable type of COVID-19-related research that is hap- pening right now on Earth. The faculty responsible for the clinical virology laboratory’s testing—Division Head Dr. Keith Jerome, Assistant Director Dr. Alex Greninger, and laboratory manager Greg Pepper—deserve special recognition for their heroic efforts. However, everyone involved in our effort has been heroic. Every test that comes A rapid and accu- rate test would be the cornerstone of our approach through UW Medicine has a dedicated clinical faculty or staff member who dons protective equipment to collect a specimen, a specimen-processing technologist who accepts the sample and ensures it is ap- propriately labeled, a courier who takes it to our central virology laboratory, additional processing technologists who prepare the specimen for testing, testing technologists who perform the test, biomedical infor- MESSAGE FROM THE HEAD OF THE VIROLOGY LAB matics staff who ensure that the results are transmitted promptly, and clinical fac- ulty and staff who accept the results and As Fast as We Can act on them. Dozens of faculty and hun- dreds of staff in Laboratory Medicine, and A UW lab is put to the test thousands more faculty, staff, volunteers and donors associated with UW Medicine By Geoff Baird make this happen. Today, if you are a patient at a UW If you’re like me, you hadn’t spent much test would be the cornerstone of our clinical Medicine hospital site, you can get the time in your life worrying about the threat approach to this threat. Our test was ready best SARS-CoV-2 test result on the planet, of a global pandemic. Thankfully, though, to go the day that the FDA allowed us to on average in less than six hours from the Department of Laboratory Medicine’s test, and since then, we have run more when you have your nose swabbed (in Virology Division at the University of than 116,000 SARS-CoV-2 tests and iden- certain cases, in two hours), and you will Washington School of Medicine has wor- tified more than 9,200 positive patients. have a world-leading care team using those ried about this for a long time. In January, Social distancing, plus our testing that results to help you and protect those around when news came out of China about the started ahead of essentially all other similar you. The reasons for this are many, but virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2, which labs in the country, have meant that our most of those reasons are the people who causes the disease known as COVID-19, “curve” in Washington has been flatter and work here.—Geoff Baird is professor and our lab got to work making a test for this our patients have been safer, despite the interim chair of the UW School of Medicine’s virus, knowing that a rapid and accurate fact that we were hit so hard by the virus Department of Laboratory Medicine 6 UW MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION BY ANTHONY RUSSO ubookstore.com STAFF A publication of the UW Alumni Association and the University of Washington since 1908 PUBLISHER Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 ASST. VP, UWAA MARKETING & COMMUNICA- TIONS Terri Hiroshima EDITOR Jon Marmor, ’94 MANAGING EDITOR Hannelore Sudermann, ’96 ART DIRECTOR Ken Shafer DIGITAL EDITOR Quinn Russell Brown, ’13 STAFF WRITER Julie Davidow CONTRIBUTING STAFF Ben Erickson, Karen Rippel Chilcote, Kerry MacDonald magazine.washington.edu for- CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Jane Brown, Jim Caple, Karam Dana, Kim Eckart, Jake Ellison, Julie Garner, Sally James, Manisha Jha, Kris Lambright, David Volk CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Jenn Furber, Jackie Russo, Brian Smale, Mark Stone, Dennis Wise CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Joe Anderson, Curtis Dickie, Olivier Kugler, ever René Milot, David Plunkert, Anthony Russo, Brian Stauffer MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR EDITORIAL OFFICES Phone 206-543-0540 Email [email protected] Fax 206-685-0611 Stories of Hope 4333 Brooklyn Ave. N.E. UW Tower 01, Box 359559 and Resilience Seattle, WA 98195-9559 WRITE US! By Jon Marmor Email [email protected] Online magazine.washington.edu part Letters may be edited for length or clarity. You can’t turn on the news without seeing their courses to online and provided nearly experts from the UW’s Institute for Health 7,000 spring-quarter classes. Students, WRONG ADDRESS? LET US KNOW. Write us at Metrics and Evaluation or UW Medicine who had just days to adjust to a new learning leading the response to the coronavirus reality, made it work. Turn to pages 16 and University of Washington Magazine pandemic. But that’s no surprise. When 17 to read how Karam Dana, associate pro- Box 359559, Seattle, WA 98195-9559 smallpox ravaged the world in the 1950s, fessor of Middle East and Islamic Studies Or: [email protected] of the it was another UW grad, epidemiologist at UW Bothell, and student Manisha Jha PLACE AN AD? William Foege, ’61, who wiped that virus faced the upheaval. SagaCity Media, Inc. off the face of the Earth by implementing Our state’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” Jeff Adams, ’83 an innovative strategy he learned from his order came just as acceptance letters for [email protected], 206-454-3007 days as a forest firefighter. The in-your-face the class of 2024 went out.