By Marla Broadfoot

On March 7, 2020, Stowers Investigator Jennifer Gerton, PhD, took her family to see a major league soccer game at Children’s Mercy Field. The air was electric, but as Gerton scanned the full-capacity crowd—18,467 smiling faces—she felt a growing sense of apprehension.

Every day, she had been following the numbers as more people in the US and around the world were infected with SARS-CoV-2. That day 118 new cases of COVID-19 had been reported in the US, bringing the total number of cases stateside to 400. As part of the then newly commissioned Stowers COVID-19 Task Force, Gerton was immersed in discussions about the Institute’s response to the unfolding crisis. That night, though, she was trying to cling to some remaining sense of normalcy.