Since March of 2020, we've been bringing you different perspectives on living through and understanding the coronavirus pandemic. Today, host Sam Whitehead sits in the interview chair to share some of the things he's learned.

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Dave O'Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says there's lots of disagreement among scientists about the value of COVID-19 booster shots even as federal regulators make recommendations for them.

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Dr. Kimberly Manning, an internist at Grady Memorial Hospital, says giving people a space to share their concerns about COVID-19 vaccines can make them more confident in getting them.

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Dr. Joe Bresee, with the Task Force for Global Health, shares how the nonprofit's work on standing up influenza vaccination programs equip it to help countries establish COVID-19 vaccination programs.

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This week, we held a special live taping of the podcast with Dr. Lilly Cheng Immergluck, Immergluck, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and Dr. Audrey Arona, who leads the Gwinnett, Newton, and Rockdale health district. The conversation focused on some of the challenges ahead and even some reasons for optimism.

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Cecile Viboud, an epidemiologist with the National Institutes of Health who helps run the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, joins me to talk about the latest projections from the group, which show the pandemic slowing down in the next few months.

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Sarah Jane Tribble, with Kaiser Health News, says top U.S. scientists started talking seriously about COVID-19 booster shots in January, at a time when many Americans hadn't received their first vaccine doses.

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Lawrence Gostin, who directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law. says there's a long history of vaccine mandates in the U.S. that have paved the way for those President Biden recently announced.

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