Hello and welcome to the Osterholm Update, COVID-19, a weekly podcast on the COVID-19 pandemic

with Dr. Michael Osterholm. Dr. Osterholm is an internationally recognized medical detective

and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, or Citirap, at the University of Minnesota.

In this podcast, Dr. Osterholm 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 Dahl, reporter for Citrapp News, and I'm your host for these conversations.

Mike, since we last spoke, the Trump administration and the CDC have issued guidelines for reopening America that use a three-phased approach based on criteria that states need to meet.

In your opinion, are we ready to reopen?

Thank you, Chris. It's good to be back with you again today. And I, like every other podcast, start out by thanking all those who

listen to this podcast. And today I would like to actually take a moment and actually dedicate

this podcast to someone

very special to me.

This past week, I had the painful experience of knowing that someone who was very near and dear

to me, my personal physician of 30 years, a dear friend and colleague, an infectious

disease physician,

Dr. Alan Kind, who was an internist here at Park Necklic Medical Center, died from pancreatic

cancer. And since March 10th, I've been unable to see him because of the COVID-19 epidemic,

pandemic. And surely did not want to put him at any increased risk of acquiring

it from my asymptomatic potential carriage of that.

That was very hard not to see him in those last days.

And while I realized that he did not succumb to COVID-19 infection, it reminded me of all the families, all the colleagues, all the best friends out there

who never had a chance to say goodbye to that special someone in their life who died because

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