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.

Hi everyone. Before we get into today's episode, I want to make an exciting announcement.

Next week's episode of the podcast will be recorded live and streamed to YouTube on Tuesday,

August 11th at 7pm Central 8pm Eastern. Michael will be answering your questions live from

Twitter using the hashtag OsterHomeUpdateLive. A link to register is in today's episode description.

So now onto today's episode. It's August 6th and nearly eight months after the first

US SARS-CoV-2 infection was confirmed, the country is at a crossroads. COVID-19 cases are

continuing to surge in the south and the west. New hot spots are emerging in the Midwest and

again in some northeastern states and the country's ability to test people for the infection

and trace the contacts of those with COVID-19 simply cannot keep up with the number of people

are getting infected. The coronavirus wildfire shows no signs of burning out and with the school year

upon us, it could soon get worse. So where do we go at this point? That's what we'll be discussing

on this episode of the OsterHomeUpdate. We'll also look at the international situation, explore

adequate safety review of vaccines and dive into the thorny issue of how to communicate with friends

and loved ones who don't take the coronavirus seriously. But first, as always, we'll start with Dr.

OsterHome's dedication, Mike, who are you dedicating this episode to?

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