We are proud to announce that the Ostrome Update podcast,

aside from being available on the Sidrapp website and usual streaming platforms,

will now also be earning on American Busker iHeart Radio. So stay tuned.

Thank you, American Busker iHeart Radio, and owner and founder Nancy Han.

Hello and welcome to the Ostrome Update COVID-19, a podcast on the COVID-19 pandemic

with Dr. Michael Ostrome. Dr. Ostrome is an internationally recognized medical detective

and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, or Sidrapp,

at the University of Minnesota. In this podcast, Dr. Ostrome will draw on more than 45

years of experience investigating infectious disease outbreaks to provide straight talk

on the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm Chris Dahl, reporter for Sidrapp News, and I'm your host for these

conversations. Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ostrome Update podcast.

For much of the past year of this pandemic, we've been living in an Omicron world.

It's almost hard to remember that when we recorded an episode of the podcast last November 23rd,

we hadn't even heard of Omicron. But that all changed on November 25th when the world got word

of an univasive variant spreading like wildfire in South Africa. I can still remember getting

the New York Times notification on my phone as I sat down for Thanksgiving dinner. I was not,

as I recall, very hungry after that. Omicron is no longer the nightmare variant that

had appeared to be at that time. And although we are seeing more sub variants of the Omicron

family emerging, they do not appear at this point to be setting off the type of surge in infections

we saw when Omicron first appeared. Let's hope it stays that way. Last week on the podcast,

we presented you with some cause for optimism. On this November 17th episode of the podcast,

we're going to dig a little deeper into the international and national data to see if that

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