E74:COVID-19 Roundtable Update - 5/10/21

For this COVID-19 Roundtable, it probably won’t surprise you at all that we’re going to talk quite a bit about vaccines. We are also going to talk about ASU’s latest predictive modeling results regarding the next four months, and we’re going to paint a picture of how hospitals and health care professionals are trying to process and recover from a very stressful time. Plus, did you ever think a podcast focused on COVID would also talk about pizza boxes? In this episode we will, in fact, check that box.

We have reached a state of pseudo-balance. Arizona is still experiencing a moderate to substantial rate of new COVID cases from the much more transmissible B.1.1.7 variant. The balance point comes from a combination of people who have already COVID and those who are vaccinated.

There is no guarantee that balance will hold. What’s required is finding ways to get more and more Arizonans vaccinated. As Will notes, we’ll get to herd immunity, but the question is when. And how.

So let’s get to it. It’s time to talk about putting all the puzzle pieces together, taking pizza boxes apart, getting people off of fences, and getting shots into arms as of May 10, 2021.