SHE FELL INTO A BURNING RING OF PUBLIC FIRE Dr. Christine Hahn, Executive Director of Idaho CDH
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BY MARGARET CARMEL
Dr. Christine Hahn went from 24 years of invisibility to walking a political high wire under the lights of the COVID-19 big-top almost overnight. Hahn, 58, took her post as Idaho’s state epidemiologist in 1997, a position most Idahoans probably didn’t know existed. Since then, she’s quietly advised five governors and other high-ranking state officials on the spread of infectious diseases cropping up from all over the world, including SARS, bird flu, and Ebola. Sometimes, if things got particularly hairy, there was a press conference where she would pop up. But usually, it was just one, before the disease ebbed back into obscurity and the worldwide threat of the world’s first major pandemic since 1918’s Spanish Flu died down. Not this time. Now, after dozens of weekly press conferences and with nearly 600,000 Americans (including over 2,000 Idahoans) dead from COVID-19, Hahn is more famous than she ever expected. 28
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“This has been the only time I have had this sustained high-profile work,” she said earlier this month, sitting at a picnic table across the street from the Idaho State Capitol. “Even with my mask on, I’ll have people kind of recognize me and I think, ‘Oh god.’ I am looking forward to sinking back into obscurity.” That doesn’t mean she is nervous, though. Hahn and other epidemiologists have been preparing for this exact scenario for decades, watching each new disease that springs up with eagle eyes to see if it’s going to be the next major pandemic the world is due for. She wasn’t totally sure COVID-19 was going to be “The One” when it first emerged, but once it took hold in Washington State’s long-term care facilities she knew it was time to batten down the hatches. When Hahn stepped up to the podium for her weekly appearances on press conferences with Governor Little watched by thousands, she used the same advice she tells her kids before they have to do public speaking: If you say what you know, and admit what you don’t, you have nothing to be worried about.
