dr. robert wachter is the chair of the department of university of medicine in san francisco and joins me now, he s also the author of the book the digital doctor, hope, help and harm at the covid computer age. thanks for joining us. thank you. when you look at infection rates, they are soaring, but the w.h.o. says in some countries cases hav s s have peaked. and here in the united states, some cities like washington, d.c., new york and cleveland are also seeing infections starting to level off or decline. what s your assessment? how much hope should that give us? a tremendous amount of hope. i think when we saw the south africa curve go up like a rocket and then come down equally quickly, the hope was that would be the pattern we would see elsewhere. then we saw it in london.
hope that we could see the same in the u.s. any time soon. a tremendous amount of hope. i think when we had saw the south africa curve go up like a rocket and then come down equally quickly the hope was that that would be the pattern that we would see elsewhere. then we saw it in london and the whole uk, and now we re seeing it in first in the northeast where the virus hit first in the united states, but now we re seeing it where i live in san francisco. it seems clear that this is what it does it comes through a population like a hurricane and goes and takes about a month and comes down and takes about a month, too. and the problems i think as it starts to come down, people may let their guard down. but the risk is still very high until it reaches the bottom of the mountain. so after the peak, you still have a month of fairly high risk until you get to a low-risk situation. what could a post-omicron world look like? i think it s going to look