It's Thursday, January 28th. I'm Kula Hughes.

And I'm Gideon Ressick and this is what a day where we are constantly working out our veins to get them ready for the vaccine.

Yeah, I have a bunch of stretches and exercises I do to get my veins super open and flowy and they're doing great.

That's good. I honestly mean when I say this, my blood tubes have never been stronger.

I've heard people say that about you. On today's show, we hear from people who have lost their jobs during the pandemic and how they are coping, then some headlines.

But first the latest.

Our case rates remain extraordinarily high and now is the time to remain vigilant.

If we continue on the current trajectory, the CDC most recent national ensemble forecast predicts that 479,000 to 514,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported by February 20th, 2021.

I know this is not news. We all want to hear, but this is something we must say so we are all the way on.

That was CDC director Dr. Rochelle Wollensky speaking during the first public health briefing from the Biden White House. While that clip was grim, Wollensky also noted that recently the number of COVID cases and hospitalizations in the US has been on a downward trend.

These briefings are supposed to be happening multiple times a week and are part of the Biden strategy to let quote science speak again.

And we learned a few new things about how the federal government plans to fight the pandemic.

So for starters, what did they have to say about the overall vaccine supply?

Yeah, so we can begin this story by kind of backing up to earlier this week on Tuesday, Biden said that the administration was close to finalizing a deal with Pfizer and Moderna to get 600 million doses in total by the end of the summer, which would be enough for 300 million people.

Awesome. This report at least solidifies the contracts of the Trump administration initially reached with these companies and it's not going to speed up the vaccinations right away this very moment.

But the really important part of this is that it would lock in more supply in the future rather than waiting to re-up later in the spring or the summer.

Why leave soft of chance? And if successful, that's enough doses for a large enough part of the population that we really could be talking about some kind of normal by the end of the summer or early fall if things fall into place.

And as we know, Biden started with the promise of 100 million doses in his first 100 days, but the pressure is coming from all sides to execute here, which has led him to recently say that that is only the baseline goal.

And not the peak. Yeah. Okay. So that's the long term. But in the short term, what does this mean for distribution to states?

Well, Pearl O'Hashen and Post, the manufacturing pace has increased, which is really good. The new administration is now forecasting that they can distribute about 10 million doses a week to states, territories and tribal governments.

Before that was around 8.6 million. And most of that, at least in the early going is going to come primarily for more Moderna doses.

And the federal government is going to give states three weeks advance notice of how much supply is in the pipeline, which hopefully will allow for better planning among state and local officials who have complained about being in the dark on that we've heard met stadiums are going to open and then the next day they're not going to open examples like that.

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