is that, you know, we sometimes are hearing now some relief, and i think that's good that the omicron variant may be slightly milder in terms of its progression to severe disease. there's no reason to think that this is necessarily the end game or the last variant that we might see. we have such high levels of transmission right now, the virus is continuing to mutate, and there's always the risk of future variants. >> yeah, and there's unfortunately been some really convincing research done on that in the past few weeks as well. we're all still trying to digest what is honestly confusing information from the cdc here about shortening isolation and quarantine. but do you think because of the sheer disruption of all these infections, that globally other jurisdictions may also look to follow that lead? >> yeah, i think so. policymakers are facing a really difficult decision right now between trying to slow the spread of this variant but also deal with the massive