'There's no end in sight to this'

This is the 11th and last episode in The Post’s coronavirus podcast series, which each week has brought listeners inside a different person’s experience of the pandemic. Previous episodes have chronicled a week in the life of an emergencyroom worker, NBA player, blues guitarist, rancher, minister, librarian, high school graduate and dentist.

For this final episode, we turn not just to someone whose life has been affected by the pandemic, but to someone whose work will help determine its future course. Timothy Sheahan is a 43-year-old virologist, who has been studying ways to stop coronaviruses for 11 years. Now, he's racing to develop drugs for this current version of the virus that's swept across the world. As the global infection rate mounts, his job as a researcher has never been more urgent. It’s a rewarding but also difficult situation for this father of two young girls. Sheahan worries he’s falling short of giving both the public and his family everything they need of him.

Listen to a week in his life, in his own words.

Previous episodes:

• 'Good luck, everybody'
• 'You never signed up for this’
• ‘I cannot hold it all’
• 'For me, it’s all the blues'
• 'First thing's first, I gotta beat this game'
• ‘It is a pretty significant hole in the system’
• ‘We grew up in agriculture—we’ve had a lot of experience of going without’
• ‘I’ll be getting my degree in the mail, but that has me feeling hollow’
• ‘Midland is trending on Twitter, and Donald Trump is tweeting about us’
• ‘We just had one of our many talks about being a black boy in America’

Get vital coronavirus news from The Post for free: 

• Sign up for the newsletter: washingtonpost.com/virusnewsletter
• Read the latest coverage: .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}