One of the pieces I read this morning said that really since the vaccines came out,

the number of people who are going to be hospitalized and die is less of a scientific question

and more of a cultural and political question. And that is really heartbreaking.

And I do not want to take away from the severity of that at all. And I think that I'm just trying to

figure out how to be a good citizen in this new landscape.

This is Sarah Stewart Holland and this is Beth Silverz. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.

Happy New Year everyone. So glad to be back with each other and with you. This will be a true

catch up episode Sarah and I have not been in touch much at all over the past two weeks except for

a text message here and there. So we hope that you enjoyed our pre-recorded episodes last two

weeks reflecting on the past year and setting intentions for this year. And we are delighted to be

with each other and with you to talk about current events as we typically do here. So today we are

going to begin by checking in on Kentucky and Colorado to talk about the storms and fires that have been

just devastating. And then we're going to talk about COVID-19 because we just can't quit it.

We really didn't miss a whole lot over the past two weeks because all of the news has been

dominated by Omicron. So we'll talk about that. And then outside of politics we're just going

to tell each other and all of you what we've been up to for the last two weeks. Before we get

started we have a very important announcement to make in regards to our extracredit book club box.

We've been doing the extracredit book log box with Wild Geese Bookshop for I believe two years

spent an amazing journey in its grown way beyond our expectations. To the point that we think it

might have outgrown us just a little bit got a little bigger than all of the partners here at

Painted Politics and Wild Geese Bookshop were prepared to deal with going into a new year. So

this next book box will be the last with Wild Geese Bookshop. We're going to take a pause and

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