Counting Deaths, Not Data: Wildfire Smoke and Me

I used to think the numbers would be enough. Fifteen thousand lives—just a line in a spreadsheet, until I realized I was measuring the cost of being ignored. I spent months tracing smoke patterns, running models, watching the death toll climb in places no one on my committee could find on a map. My advisor called it 'significant.' I called it suffocating. Some nights, the air in the lab felt as thick as the smoke I was studying. I kept rerunning the analysis, hoping for a different answer, but the outcome never changed: the most vulnerable always paid the price. I wonder if anyone else feels this—like the data is screaming, but all anyone hears is the next grant deadline. #ScienceFatigue #InvisibleImpact #LabConfessions #Science