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 this 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 posing your questions about the COVID-19 pandemic to Dr. Michael

Oster Home. If you haven't already, you can send us your questions, you can send your

questions to us on Twitter using the hashtag OsterHomeUpdateLive. So we'll start this episode

of the Oster Home Update as we usually do with Dr. Oster Home Dedication and his views on

the current state of the pandemic. And then we'll start taking your questions and we'll

try to get to as many questions as possible. So Michael, start with you and who are you

dedicating this special live episode of the podcast to?

Well, first of all, thank you very much Chris again. Thank you to the production staff.

And thank you to all of you who are actually on live with us here. Based on emails I received

over the last couple of days, it's fair for me to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

As I know, we have people from Europe to Asia who are joining us tonight. And as always, we

appreciate so much having you with us and sharing this time. Tonight I actually have a double

dedication somewhat different yet fitting. Actually today would be my mother's 89th birthday

...