Hi everyone, before we get started with this week's episode of the Oostrom update,

just wanted to let you know that next Tuesday, March 23rd, at 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern,

we'll be hosting a live episode of the podcast on our YouTube channel.

You can tweet us your questions using the hashtag OostromUpdateLive.

The link to the live stream will be posted in this week's episode description.

Now, to this week's episode of the Oostrom update.

Hello and welcome to the Oostrom home update, COVID-19, a weekly podcast on the COVID-19 pandemic

with Dr. Michael Oostrom home. Dr. Oostrom 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. Oostrom 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, and I'm your host for these conversations.

Over the course of the past week, there's been a great deal of media coverage

marking the year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

Much of that coverage is focused, fittingly, on the live-lost and devastation

wrought by the coronavirus. There's also been a lot of focus on what we've learned over the past year.

We've clearly learned a lot about the virus and how it spreads, seconds, and kills people

over the past year. But with all that we know, how much do we really understand this virus?

In an interview last June with the public radio program here and now,

right as the second wave of US cases was starting, Dr. Oostrom said the following,

I think we all in the public health world have to have real humility right now and just to

admit we don't understand exactly what's happening and that we will do our very best to figure it out

...