Hi, my name is Alinda. I'm on my way to work to take care of the elephants at the Rosemonga

Ferdzue in Syracuse, New York. This podcast was recorded at 2.21 pm on Tuesday, September 20th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but the elephants will still be big and gray.

Okay, here's the show.

They sound like lovely co-workers to me. Yes, nice elephants.

Hey there. It's the MPR Politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

I'm Mara Liason, National Political Correspondent.

And MPR's Rob Stein from our science desk is here. Hey Rob.

Hey Sue.

So in an interview with Scott Pelley on CBS's 60 Minutes This Past Sunday, President Biden made an

unexpected comment. It's the pandemic over. The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with

COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. It's what the pandemic is over.

Rob, I imagine this declaration came with a bit of a surprise to the public health community.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, boy, don't we all wish it was true. The pandemic's over.

Wrap it up in a pretty bow and move on. But I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's kind

of become my lot in life. The pandemic is not over. The virus is still killing more than 400

people every day, which translates into almost 150,000 deaths a year, which is clearly a major

ongoing public health problem. That's triple the number of people who die in a bad flu season.

And that doesn't even count the tens of thousands of people who are still ending up in the hospital.

And all the lives that are being upended by just catching so-called milder,

modern cases of COVID, you know, kids missing school workers calling out sick,

plans getting scuddled with the last minutes. So, unfortunately, COVID is still very much in our lives.

...