brilliant, epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox and dr. megan ranney, she works at er in rhode island and it s a professor at brown university. dr. brilliant, let me start with you, the study that came out of uk and i know people were waiting thon to ftry to get information about the severity of omicron. they are reporting they do not have any evidence from data taken across the uk that omicron is less severe than delta. what do you make of this? erin, thank you for inviting me back, again. so, that strd study from imperial cloej is what a lot of people have been waiting for and the reason is we are pretty sure we understand transmissibility. omicron is one of the most, if not the most, transmissible virus in living memory. but we were unsure and we re still unsure about how much morbidity, disease, and hospitalizations and death will it cause? because we have only had this virus for three weeks. it s only been around for three