E85: COVID-19 Roundtable Update

Today, after more than a two-month hiatus, we’re back with our COVID-19 Roundtable. And my how things have changed in the past two months. You know it from your daily experiences, you’ve heard it from our guests, the COVID-19 rollercoaster continues. We’re well into our third wave of COVID-19 infections, this time largely due to the Delta variant, and hospital COVID-19 metrics are following suit. The CDC has recommended that all people, vaccinated and unvaccinated, wear a mask indoors in public when in an area of substantial or high transmission (which is the status of nearly every county in the United States). Our kids, most of whom are still too young to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, are headed back to in-person learning inside of schools that are battling new laws which remove schools’ abilities to require masks and vaccinations. Without question, this pandemic is not over.

But there’s always hope. The latest research shows that vaccines are safe and effective. They’re good at slowing the spread and great at preventing sickness and death.

Our first guest serves our eyes and ears on the medical frontlines. She’s an emergency medicine physician at Valleywise Health, Dr. Kara Geren. Next, he’s the reason that many of us were able to spit into tubes and avoid those annoying nasal swabs when getting tested for COVID-19, Executive Director of ASU’s Biodesign Institute, Dr. Joshua LaBaer.  And finally, the common thread that stretches all the way back to the very first CV19 Roundtable in March of 2020, he’s the Executive Director of the Arizona Public Health Association, Will Humble.

Here is what we know as of August 16, 2021.