Dr. Michael Osterholm: Conflicting Signals – Outlook for Combating COVID-19 in 2021

As we approach the end of 2020, it’s difficult to reconcile the conflicting signals and assess the outlook for the world’s fight against COVID. On the one hand, pharmaceutical companies have collaborated to accomplish what many scientists call a miracle in developing not one but several effective vaccines. On the other hand, in the month of December alone we saw over 3,000 COVID deaths in a single day in the United States – our highest ever single day total and eclipsing the death toll on 9/11. And across the globe populations remain divided in their willingness to adopt measures most medical professionals think are required to effectively combat the spread of this deadly pandemic.

In this episode of Deciding Factors, we talked with Dr. Michael Osterholm, Regents Professor, McKnight Endowed Chair in Public Health and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, and author of the 2017 New York Times bestseller The Deadliest Enemy, about the outlook for the world’s fight against the deadly pandemic and the prospects for vaccine efficacy and distribution.