Maria is joined by Abdullah Shihipar, public health researcher at the People, Place & Health Collective at Brown University, and Jessica Malaty Rivera, infectious disease epidemiologist and a senior adviser at the Pandemic Prevention Institute. They break down the latest on the COVID-19 surge, including guidance on the new Omicron variant, and how capitalism is influencing the CDC’s shifting public health response. They also talk about ways to protect the most vulnerable, and what a post-pandemic world might look like.  ITT Staff Picks: - For The Marshall Project, reporters Beth Schwartzapfel and Keri Blakinger warn about what the latest omicron-driven COVID-19 surge could look like in jails and prisons, many of which are already experiencing staffing shortages, vaccine hesitancy, and overcrowding.  - “In the US, we are so accustomed to paying out of pocket for essential health care that when it is provided for free, it is a foreign concept,” writes Abdullah Shihipar in this piece for The Nation on how a lack of universal health care coverage has aggravated the pandemic in the US. - Aaron Short writes about the brutal toll of pandemic-induced burnout and staffing shortages on the nursing industry in this piece for New York Magazine.  Photo credit: AP Photo/David Dermer, File  

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