This is PEDYACAST.

Welcome to Pediacast, a pediatric podcast for parents.

And now, direct from the campus of nationwide children's, here is your host, Dr. Mike.

Hello, everyone, and welcome.

Once again to Pediacast.

It is a pediatric podcast for moms and dads.

This is Dr. Mike, coming to you from the campus of nationwide children's hospital.

We are in Columbus, Ohio.

It's episode 471 for September 1st, 2020.

We're calling this one back to school with COVID.

I want to welcome all of you to the program.

So summer does not last forever, although there are certainly days when I wish it would.

But students have been out of the classroom longer than any other period in modern time,

with many children in the United States learning and then vacationing from home since March.

Despite what we hear in the news, most communities are doing a great job of flattening their curve, with a few hiccups and exceptions.

Early in this pandemic, I will remind you that we heard over two million Americans would

likely die without some extraordinary efforts.

And those efforts being closing schools and businesses, physical distancing, wearing face

coverings, washing our hands and surfaces, and limiting non-essential travel.

Public health officials told us if we did these things, we could get the number of American

deaths down from over 2 million to around 600,000 by the end of the year.

The year is not over yet, but we're setting at around 183,000 deaths from COVID here in the United States on September 1st, 2020, which is still a lot of deaths, especially when you compare it to a typical flu season, which results in about 20 to 30,000 deaths each year.

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