Eric Lofgren, infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at WSU’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health. (WSU Photo)

Eric Lofgren admits that epidemiology is a curious profession.

“The issue all epidemiologists have is we get excited about epidemics, but they’re terrible things,” said Lofgren, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Washington State University. “There is that tension.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for researchers like Lofgren to test the assumptions he has made in computer models with the real-life ways the disease behaves. In turn, he’s able to use his modeling and data to suggest interventions and policies to help control the spread of the virus.

Lofgren, an assistant professor at WSU’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, has been studying impacts of the novel coronavirus, including what happens to infection rates when neighboring counties and states have very different restrictions on social distancing; controlling COVID’s spread among incarcerated populations; preventing transmission between providers and patients in healthcare settings — particularly when cold and flu season returns and it’s harder to tell COVID from other ailments; and when and how schools should be reopened.

The reality of the coronavirus response has provided surprises, Lofgren said. He and others in his field were shocked by the lack of a coordinated federal response — but other surprises were reassuring.

If you had told him that Washington residents were going to be ordered to do several months of social distancing, “I would have said nobody is going to comply with that,” Lofgren said. “I’ve been encouraged to see how willing people are to do that and now adaptable and resilient folks are. That has been interesting.”

While the U.S. has the highest number of COVID cases and deaths worldwide, Washington state’s response mostly impressed the epidemiologist. How would he grade the state’s performance? “I’m an easy grader,” he said. “I’d say B+.”

But he is feeling anxious about the fall and winter. Lofgren expects the infection rates to come up again, and wonders if the public will go for a second round of social distancing. He urges people to think about safe behaviors in a different way.


Gunner, Harley and Felix aren’t just canine companions. The threesome helps WSU epidemiologist Eric Lofgren take needed breaks from work. (Photo courtesy of Eric Lofgren)

“We’ve treated social distancing as an on or off switch we can flip,” he said. “It’s actually a dial.”

That means, for example, rather than deciding schools should be opened or closed, looking at ways to open them safely. Lots of kids outside at recess or in large cafeteria lunches are out, while eating in classrooms and fewer kids spread over more recess are in. At universities, dorms could have limited dining hours where people living in the same area also eat together. These steps shrink the circles of exposure.

One of the big challenges in modeling and projecting is the lack of key information about coronavirus, particularly how it behaves in asymptomatic cases. That makes it tough when health officials, policy makers, educators — pretty much everyone — is clamoring for clear-cut advice on how to behave. Epidemiologists can’t always give absolute predictions and advice.

“You know what your model can or cannot do,” Lofgren said. “You need to own your uncertainty.”

We caught up with Lofgren for this Working Geek, a regular GeekWire feature. Continue reading for his answers to our questionnaire.

Current location: My home office in Pullman

Computer types: A MacBook Pro as my primary work laptop, and a custom built Windows gaming machine that’s been hastily converted into a social-distancing induced workstation. And a Mac Mini on order.

Mobile devices: An iPhone XS and a first generation iPad Pro.

Favorite apps, cloud services and software tools: Dropbox is probably the thing keeping me sane moving between devices and being able to just rely on everything being where I think it should be and how it’s organized. GitHub for keeping a research lab’s worth of code in something generally resembling order and where it’s easy to share between students, researchers, etc. And finally RStudio for being by far the best environment to do my work in that I’ve found.

Describe your workspace. Why does it work for you? The kind of disorder where I know where everything is, everything is in reach, and absolutely no one else can come anywhere near it without disrupting everything. I’m a dual monitor kind of guy, though the home machine has a single massive 32-inch monitor my wife bought me for my birthday, and that works too. Mostly I need to be able to spread things out and keep lots of things open at the same time, both digitally and physically.…and a mechanical keyboard.

Lofgren’s work-from-home space. (Photo courtesy of Eric Lofgren)

Your best advice for managing everyday work and life? This one is definitely hard, especially during social distancing. The thing that worked the best for me was getting a dog — no matter how much stuff is piling up, they still need to go for a walk. Getting them dinner is a good reminder that it might be time to take a pause yourself. Things like that. Also great for reminding me to allow myself small pleasures like playing fetch or cuddles on the couch.

Your preferred social network? How do you use it for business/work? Twitter. #epitwitter is an amazing professional community of epidemiologists who are at the same time some of the smartest, most driven and most intelligent people I know, and simultaneously caring and compassionate and willing to share their authentic selves, silly inside jokes and professional insecurities.

Current number of unanswered emails in your inbox? I have 148 unread emails. Emails that have been technically read and are languishing waiting for an answer is a much higher number.

Number of appointments/meetings on your calendar this week? Only nine so far. But the week is yet early, and during the epidemic, there’s a lot of “suddenly there’s three meetings scheduled tomorrow” going on.

How do you run meetings? In my lab group, I tend to start out with any general information that will bring people up to speed on what’s happening, what they can expect in the near future, etc. and then go one by one, ask how everyone is doing, what they’re working on, etc. and close out with the goals for the next meeting. But it’s something I’m still working on fine tuning; as a relatively new faculty member, things have grown from “just me” to a research group pretty quickly.

Beloved mutts, from left to right: Felix, Harley and Gunner. (Photo courtesy of Eric Lofgren)

Everyday work uniform? Hiking boots, jeans and an untucked button-up shirt. Johnston & Murphy is my preferred choice for the latter.

How do you make time for family? With very rare exception I eat dinner with my wife every night, and try to be nearby while she’s cooking (usually I’m doing the dishes) so we can catch up on the day. If I’m sort of idly working (answering email, etc.) where I don’t need to concentrate, I try to do that nearby as well.

Best stress reliever? How do you unplug? I paint toy soldiers and then play overly complicated games with them. Everyone just found out British actor Henry Cavill does too, so I suppose I can’t be too sheepish about it.

What are you listening to? AcaDames. It’s an amazing podcast co-hosted by Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist I knew in graduate school, about women in academia. While I’m obviously not the direct audience for it, I get something out of every single episode, and as someone who advises and mentors women considering academic careers, it’s important listening.

Daily reads? Favorite sites and newsletters? I’m still using Flipboard as my primary news aggregator — partly because I’ve found its algorithms occasionally allow for stories from other parts of the political spectrum, for example. I think it helps to keep tabs on the goings-on outside your bubble.

Book on your nightstand (or e-reader)? “Saturnine” by Dan Abnett, a book about the aforementioned toy soldier game. Given I’ve been working fairly nonstop these past couple weeks on COVID-related work, it’s nice to have something that’s just entertaining fiction to help my brain transition from work time to sleeping. I’ve been an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy my whole life.

For Lofgren, his interest in painting figurines got a boost of cred when British actor Henry Cavill confessed to the hobby. (Photo courtesy of Eric Lofgren)

Night owl or early riser? Definitely night owl. My natural schedule sees me up at about noon and working until the early morning. I am astonishingly productive between about 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. During things like, well, COVID this actually gets worse. Some coworkers at a previous job nicknamed this “Vampire Mode.” It’s both really productive and kind of nice because my early-bird colleagues — especially clinicians — would get emails from me at the start of their day, have the whole day to work on it, and send stuff back to me. Just as they were calling it a day, I’d be ramping up. It’s an immensely productive cycle, but a hard one to sustain if you have to go run errands.

Where do you get your best ideas? While talking to other people about their ideas. Most of my best work comes from listening to someone describe a problem and then trying to figure out if the methods I use can help solve it.

One of the papers of my dissertation was spawned by a longtime collaborator asking offhand after a talk if my model could handle a new treatment that was getting a lot of attention (it was fecal transplant for treating C. difficile, for the disease nerds out there). I told her I’d think about that, and by the time I got home, I was excited and ready to dive in.

Whose work style would you want to learn more about or emulate? There’s a group of people, and Bill Gates is often put in this category, who have built companies, research groups, etc. by surrounding themselves with smart people, and giving those people the freedom and support they need to be exceptional. That’s the environment I’d like to foster for my students and trainees.

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