Hello and welcome to the Oster Home Update, COVID-19, a weekly podcast on the COVID-19

pandemic with Dr. Michael Oster Home. Dr. Oster Home is an internationally recognized

medical detective and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

or CITRAP at the University of Minnesota. In this podcast, Dr. Oster Home 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 Doll, reporter for CITRAP News.

I'm your host for these conversations.

It's been six months since the COVID-19 pandemic began. And since those first reports of a novel

pneumonia-like illness emerged from China in late December, the coronavirus has spread like wildfire,

sickening more than 9 million people around the world and killing more than 473,000.

In that time, we've learned much about how this virus spreads, how it causes illness,

and who would affect most severely. But there's still so much about the novel coronavirus that

remains a mystery. So for this episode of the Oster Home Update, Dr. Oster Home is going to flip

the script a bit and we'll focus up both on what he knows and what he doesn't know about the

coronavirus. But first, Mike, who would you like to dedicate this episode of the podcast to?

Mike Doll, Dr. Oster Home, Dr. Oster Home. Well, thank you very much, Chris. It's good to be with you again.

I've thought a lot about how have we gotten through those first six months and what has made it

possible for us to be where we're at today, even though we're still in the midst of this pandemic,

a lot of good things have happened. And I think that we must never, for a moment, take for granted,

our essential workers in this country or for that matter around the world. They have performed

in a ways that many of us have no idea that have made our lives at least tolerable through all

of the situation. And so when you look at the groups that really fall into that category of

...