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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.

Over the past few weeks on the Oster Home Update, we've been talking about an oncoming

hurricane of COVID-19 cases, fueled by coronavirus variants and the loosening of pandemic restrictions

around the country.

To sum, this prediction has seemed off the mark, because cases, hospitalizations, and deaths

were declining, and the vaccine rollout was going much better than many predicted.

The storm seemed like it was far off in the distance.

Now it appears to be making landfall, and alarms are starting to go off.

I'm going to lose the script, and I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have

of the impending doom, CDC director, Rochelle Wilinski said in a press briefing earlier

this week.

We have so much to look forward to, so much promise potential of where we are, and so

...