Hello and welcome to the Ostrome Update, a podcast on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases

with Dr. Michael Ostrome.

Dr. Ostrome is an internationally recognized medical detective and director of the Center

for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, or SIDRAP, at the University of Minnesota.

In this podcast, Dr. Ostrome draws on nearly 50 years of experience investigating infectious

disease outbreaks to provide straight talk on the latest infectious disease and public health

threats.

I'm Chris Dahl, reporter for SIDRAP News, and I'm your host for these conversations.

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

As anyone who listens to this podcast on a regular basis knows, our discussions of global

and national COVID-19 data, dating back to last winter, have typically included the disclaimer

that the reported case numbers are likely a vast undercount.

Most countries are no longer reporting case numbers, and most people are testing positive

at home, if they're even bothering to test.

But it's been a while since the disconnect between the official data and what we're seeing

in the community has felt this large, and it totally, it certainly seems like a lot of

people are getting COVID right now.

Each water data appears to back that up.

Hospitalizations and deaths, however, are still low when compared with the worst periods

of the pandemic.

But given how much COVID activity there is right now, should we be thinking about changing

our behavior?

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