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.

Hello everyone and welcome to another live episode of the Oster Home Update, COVID-19,

a podcast from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. I'm your host, Chris Doll,

and over the next hour I'll be posting your questions about the COVID-19 pandemic to Dr. Oster Home.

If you haven't already, you can send your questions to us on Twitter using the hashtag

Oster Home Update Live. We'll start this episode of the Oster Home Update as we usually do,

with Dr. Oster Home's welcome and dedication and his views on the current state of the pandemic.

Then we'll start taking your questions and we'll try to get to as many as possible.

So Mike, your opening thoughts on this our third live episode of the Oster Home Update?

Well thank you Chris and thank you to all of you who are listening live right now.

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon to all of those who'll be listening in the days ahead.

We know that thousands of people ultimately listen to this podcast. We want to thank you very

much for being here as I say every week with Real Sincereity. As we know you have many, many choices

to get your information on COVID-19 and we just appreciate you being with us and being part of this

podcast family which it truly has become over the past year. At this point, let me just say that

it's been a journey. A little over a year ago, my repeaters, who many of you know from

...