text:  "I think it's important to cry. So much suffering has happened."
  
  —Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health
  
  Deena Hinshaw's daily press conferences could reasonably be renamed Guided Meditation for Pandemic Times. When the provincial chief medical officer of health takes the podium, her voice is calm, clear, and steady—her competence and directness combine to feel grounding, not unlike gently spattering rain, softly trilling birds, or your own deep breaths. This effect remains in place even, and perhaps especially, when she delivers the details of Alberta's sobering new reality. "Previously shared yesterday, as you know, I was tested for COVID-19," opened Hinshaw, in an address to the province on March 17, 2020, St. Patrick's Day. "And I am pleased to let you know that my test results were negative and that I am feeling better this morning." She went on to order the province's first set of public health measures: a limit on mass gatherings and a closure of everything from casinos and bingo halls to libraries and swimming pools to bars and nightclubs. "I know this will disappoint many," she acknowledged, "but we must take action." She continued with why the restrictions were important, and how they would help the entire province. She explained the concept of flattening the curve. And again and again she refused to minimize how much it all would suck. "The measures introduced today will be hard on all of us," she closed, "but I believe we are ready and able to rise to the challenge before us."
  
  During the briefing, Hinshaw wore a grey dress, with the periodic table emblazoned across her arms and chest. The very cool, very scientific wardrobe choice seemed to further win over anxious Albertans. Within days, media had declared, "Alberta Loves Dr. Hinshaw, and Her Periodic Table Dress." It was a fair assumption. Tweets praising the doctor flooded social media. "Can we take a moment to recognize how cool Dr. Hinshaw is?" wrote one user, gushing over both dress and doctor. "How is she not Alberta's premier?" Another Albertan wrote, "Is it too soon to talk about the fact that Dr. Hinshaw has the periodic table on her dress and that I want to be her when I grow up?" Some fans joked that she could have a share of their hoarded toilet paper, while others noted that if Hinshaw could come to their "collective houses and read Albertans a bedtime story we'd all be sleeping better." An Edmonton singer-songwriter crafted lyrics that included the lines, "She's saving all the octogenarians / She reminds me of one of my favourite librarians." And, after being pleasantly bombarded with requests for the dress—and praise for Hinshaw—the garment's B.C.-based designer decided to re-release the previously discontinued design. It sold out almost immediately. The description for the dress now notes, "Yes, this is the dress you've been seeing Dr. Deena Hinshaw wearing on the news."
  
  The dress was only the beginning. In the early months of the pandemic, Hinshaw was ushered into the role of province-wide folk hero—whether she wanted the newfound fame or not (she didn't). Fuelling all that adoration, however, was one difficult decision after another. At the same press conference where she wore The Dress, a journalist asked Hinshaw to clarify whether the new public health rules were based on her recommendations. They were, of course. Though she had an excellent team, and the combined knowledge of the other provincial and territorial health officers across the country, the weight of the province's health decisions ultimately teetered on her shoulders. It was "absolutely unnerving," said Hinshaw, to rely on the rapidly evolving, question-inducing information about the virus to make those decisions. She didn't have a crystal ball, she couldn't see into the future; she had to make decisions based on what she knew, and nobody knew very much at all.
  
  What they did know could easily fast-forward out of date. In one Friday briefing in March, she swore that she would not close schools. On Monday, she closed them. Hinshaw had to make a lot of one-eighty decisions like that: telling people asymptomatic carriers couldn't transmit the virus, then warning they could; saying don't wear masks, then definitely do. If the virus was a monster, it was a shapeshifting one. Blink once and it looked like influenza. Blink again and it looked like SARS. Blink a third time and it looked like neither of those things. Alberta didn't get its first case until March 5—so much later than the other provinces that Hinshaw actually wondered if the new coronavirus had arrived in Alberta undetected. She felt the same awful anticipation so many others have described. She wondered, briefly, if something about Alberta was protecting the province. Then everything moved in a hundred directions, thousands of rubber bands snapping. All the theoretical plans already in place were considered and, one by one, gradually abandoned. "In the time span between when we had our first case and two weeks later," Hinshaw said, "we did many things that were beyond what we had originally anticipated." From that point on, it was a blur.