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From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdad, I'm Greta Johnson, it is the middle of November

in the year 2021. COVID is very much still a thing. The holidays are around the corner. Temperatures

are dropping and people are spending more time indoors. Luckily, there have been some recent

game changers. Vaccines are widely available now to anyone who's five years older. Boosters

for any adults who want a third shot are coming soon too. And today's guest says you should definitely

get one. It's clear everybody's that we wanted some point because we're not going to get to a

herd immunity place or a point where we've got transmission under control soon enough to avoid

helping people getting boosters. That is Dr. Emily Landon, she's an infectious disease specialist

at the University of Chicago. We also like to call her Nerdad's resident epidemiologist, Emily,

welcome back. Hey hi Greta, thanks for having me. I love being here. Oh my gosh, thanks for coming

on. I think being the resident epidemiologist for something called Nerdad is exactly what I wanted

my whole life. It's so true. Okay, so we talked to you not that long ago, but there has been a huge

development since then, which is the fact that kids five and over now are eligible to get the vaccine.

Yeah, it's wild. So how much do you think that? I mean, that increases the population of eligible

people to be vaccinated pretty significantly. Like, do you think this could curb the pandemic in general?

Well, it definitely gets us into a category of being able to get closer to some

semblance of herd immunity. I think at this point, though, we all kind of realize that herd immunity

is a great idea, but we're really not going to get there for a good long time. And what we're

really looking for is enough population immunity to keep COVID transmission levels low and keep

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