Dr. Norem joins the show every Monday morning at 7:05 to give us the latest on the coronavirus, COVID-19, and the vaccine rollout.

Dr. Norem has been joining us pretty much every week for over a year now. He was explaining things during last spring's lockdown, and he's been guiding us all the way through the pandemic. We learn something new from Dr. Norem every week and this week was no exception.

This week's big topic was when, or if, the coronavirus will ever be under control. That's a loaded question that Dr. Norem helps us unpack. There are a lot of variables that will go into deciding when the virus will be "under control", the biggest of them being the number of vaccinations that get administered.

We are doing pretty good here in the United States. We're not quite at the threshold for herd immunity, but compared to other countries, we are light years ahead. I was shocked when Dr. Norem told us that less than 2% of Japan's population is currently vaccinated and they are having some very problematic outbreaks around the country. We asked Dr. Norem how such a well-established country like Japan could be so far behind in vaccinations. According to Dr. Norem, it's because Japan was more focused on contract tracing and stopping the spread of the disease, rather than invest in vaccines. Then when the vaccines were released earlier this year, they had almost none ordered for their country and are struggling because of it.

We also talk about where we went wrong with testing for COVID-19 last year and how we can correct that going forward.

We thank Dr. Norem for his time and look forward to speaking with him again next Monday morning at 7:05.

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