Hi, this is Katarina and type A Taiwan, where I'm about to step outside of my hotel room for the first time after quarantine.

This podcast was recorded at 205 PM on January 5th, 2022.

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Our listeners staying safe. Good job, Katarina.

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All right, hey there. It is the unfair politics podcast. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover demographics and culture.

I'm Franco Ardonia as I cover the White House.

And today on our podcast, we have our very own in-house COVID expert.

Allison Aubrey of NPR's Health Team is here again. Hey Allison.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course.

All right, listeners, you may have heard the US is dealing with a staggering rise in COVID cases.

We have a widespread shortage of tests and there's a fair amount of mixed messaging as the highly transmissible

Omicron variant surges. So we're going to start with the basics here. Allison, let's talk numbers.

Let's talk cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Where exactly are we? Give us a sense of the

of the scope here. Sure. I mean, cases are just way up.

200% or so. The virus is everywhere. Obviously, very contagious. Hospitalizations are up,

but not nearly as much. Somewhere in like the 25 to 30% range increase of this week compared to last week.

Now, there are areas that are much harder hit, New Jersey, Ohio, but basically people being

hospitalized are much more likely to be unvaccinated or immunocompromised. People who are fully vaccinated

and boosted are protected against serious illness. And deaths are kind of flat. If you look at the

most recent CDC data, US is averaging about 1100 deaths a day. Last year at the height of the

January peak, the US was averaging 3300 deaths a day. So that's quite a decline. I see. So the

...