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.

Earlier this week, the United States passed a pandemic milestone that would have seemed

unimaginable a year ago. 500,000 deaths. More Americans died in one year of the COVID-19

pandemic than in two world wars and the Vietnam War combined. The immensity of that number

and all the people have been impacted by those deaths is staggering. The people we lost

were extraordinary. President Joe Biden said in the ceremony to mark the grim milestone,

we have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. But while the nation processes the massive

loss of life over the past year, more and more questions are being raised about what the

coming year will look like. COVID-19 cases continue to decline in the US and around the

globe, and more people are getting vaccinated. But coronavirus variants continue to spread

and are threatening to reverse those gains. How do public health officials balance the

public's desire to return to normal, especially among those who have been vaccinated, with

the need to remain vigilant against another surge? On this February 25th episode of the

OSTROM update, we'll discuss the growing questions about how we define the new normal

and what people can do and can't do once they're vaccinated and how the variants will affect

that equation. We'll also talk about the impact of COVID-19 vaccines and discuss a new CITRAP

...