I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WB EZ Chicago.

Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

Listen wherever you get your podcast.

From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette.

I'm Greta Johnson. A lot of people are talking about how this month is feeling a lot like that one time in March of 2020. We are seeing record high numbers of cases of COVID across the U.S. More and more people I know are getting sick. But I do feel like there are two super important distinctions to be had from almost two years ago. One of those is the fact that a lot of us are vaccinated and boosted.

And the other is that at least theoretically there's a lot of available testing out there.

With that said, I am still super confused about how I should be moving through the world right now.

And it seems like y'all are too, because when we asked listeners for questions, someone who goes by Teeny Pooh on Instagram wanted to know why is this still

happening and can we just not? So here to help us navigate is Dr. Emily Landon, Ndette's resident

epidemiologist. She's an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago.

Emily, welcome back. Hi, thanks for having me. Can we just not? No, we're kind of doing that.

It's not going very well, is it? Yeah, this is I have decided officially that January belongs in

2021 and that I'm not starting the new year until 20, until February. Okay, great. Well, that's, that's something we can do. I like that. So yeah, I don't know. Like, what do you think? I assume things aren't quite as drastic as last winter, right? Like, do we need to be potting up as intensely? It's really. So should we need to go back to pods? So here's here's

what I think is happening. And health care is being crushed, absolutely crushed because there's

unmitigated transmission of an incredibly transmissible virus. Now the good news is that a lot of vaccinated

people are going to be just fine. Vaccinated and boosted people are going to be just fine if they get

if they get COVID. Some of them will have bad infections and end up in the hospital. Some of them

will have, will end up with long COVID or organ damage, but a lot fewer than with previous waves

and a lot, you know, sort of it's still a low number, a low number to begin with, and then less

...