Yahoo Movies Study finds omicron causes more reinfections, 80 years since Pearl Harbor: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Omicron causes more reinfections, study finds
It's still not clear if the variant makes people more sick. Plus, it's been 80 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, tech reporter Terry Collins explains how 'tiny homes' are offering stability for the homeless, money and tech reporter Michelle Shen talks about the project that might make Elon Musk a trillionaire and President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet virtually.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 Things you need to know Tuesday, the 7th of December, 2021. Today, omicron and reinfections, plus, how tiny homes are offering stability for homeless communities, and more.
Here are some of the top headlines:
A state of emergency is in effect in Hawaii as a powerful storm system continues to slam the islands. More than two feet of rain is possible in some areas leading to potentially catastrophic flooding.
The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell continues today in New York. Yesterday, a witness testified that Maxwell pressured her into giving Jeffrey Epstein sexual massages when she was still a teenager.
And the Biden Administration has announced a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The U.S. will not send an official government delegation to the Games citing Chinese genocide and other human rights abuses.
A large study in South Africa has found that the omicron variant of COVID-19 is more likely to avoid protection from previous infection and cause reinfection compared to other strains of the coronavirus. The study analyzed more than 35,000 reinfections out of some 2.8 million positive tests, and that protection from previous infection might be cut down by about half. The study did not reveal whether omicron causes more severe damage or whether it can make the vaccines less effective. Health experts do increasingly believe that omicron will become the dominant strain in the world. Currently, about 99% of coronavirus infections in the U.S. are from the delta variant.
It's been 80 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Speaker2:
It is no joke. It is a real war.
Taylor Wilson:
That's a reporter from KGU, a Honolulu radio station on the day of the attack. More than 2,400 people were killed when hundreds of Japanese planes bombed American service members and civilians bringing the U.S. into World War II. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt had strong and famous words after the attack.
President Roosevelt:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
Taylor Wilson:
Today, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day will be observed at Hawaii's Pearl Harbor National Memorial with several events. They include a ceremony for the 429 USS Oklahoma crew members who were killed. One of the survivors of that ship is Navy veteran David Russell, who was just 21 at the time. Today he's 101 and returning to Hawaii for the ceremony.
David Russell:
They announced over the loud speaker that this is an attack. So we went to general quarters and I had two general quarters stations. If we came under air attack, I was to sink cover down below the armor deck. I went top side. By the time I get top side, the ship was almost ready to capsize. The wind was blowing that fire towards the Maryland and the Oklahoma, and I didn't want to get in that water so I just made a big leap and I caught a hold of the line that was hanging over the side of the Maryland, and I hoisted myself aboard the Maryland. I got up to the Ford Island administration building. I think I had to go to the bathroom, so I went inside and that's where most of the men there were burnt, they were all laying along side the wall there.
Taylor Wilson:
Each year, the Pearl Harbor Memorial commemorates the event as a catalyst that led to a changed world. This year, the Memorial was focusing on the long and difficult road to peace.
You've probably heard of tiny homes. The trend is popular on social media and there have even been TV shows made about it. Often, there will be stylish luxury homes or cozy spaces for vacationers trying to get away, but tiny homes are also increasingly being used for a different purpose: shelter for homeless communities around the country. Tech reporter, Terry Collins has more.
Terry Collins:
So there are cities, including Boston, Denver, Oakland, Sacramento, and San Jose, California that are either learning or trying to adapt the Low Income Housing Institute's initiative. They're a group out Seattle that's created 16 tiny home villages for more than about 600 homeless residents. Their idea for the tiny homes is to help the residents get into a bit of "transitional housing." It's to help them from getting off the streets and hopefully into permanent housing where, hopefully, they'll have something in terms of having a steady job, income and just being more stable in their lives - to getting support ranging from how to balance finances, to therapy, to having to better plan their lives and just overall emotional support that I think many feel that the homeless lack. Because there's a sense amongst them of fear, distrust and the instability that just permeates their lives. They try and just get them into a bit of being settled. It's a consensus of what I've heard. The goal is to not just have them in this transitional housing, but to put them in something permanent that would give them a little more structure, and therefore, this word again, stability.
The national figures say that more than a half million people are homeless. I think that that number is severely undercounted, and I think a lot of that comes from one, the stigma that homeless people feel like they face that they don't want to be attached to being homeless, because that gives a sense of maybe that they're worthless, they're meaningless, that they don't mean anything except a statistic. But when we found out through the reporting with places like the Low Income Housing Institute, they try to help homeless if they're unhoused, matter; that they are important and that they do mean something to somebody and they can be productive members of society. I think sometimes it gets lost when we see someone maybe on a corner or on a block in maybe a desperate or looking helpless situation.
Taylor Wilson:
For more, search tiny homes on usatoday.com.
Last week, SpaceX launched 48 Starlink satellites into orbit off the coast of Florida. But what is Starlink? Money/Tech reporter, Michelle Shen, is here to fill us in on the project that could make Elon Musk a trillionaire.
Michelle Shen:
So basically, when people get access to Starlink, they pay for internet access, right? So I think the current cost of a Starlink kit, which includes a terminal that connects you to the satellite is around $500, and then the service is about $100 per month. Basically, in this Morgan Stanley report, it was saying Elon Musk is projected to be the next trillionaire. SpaceX is going to be worth $100 billion, and they said the core value of it was coming from Starlink, not necessarily from these rocket launches. But what I think is really interesting is they have this symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship where as they develop better and more sophisticated rockets, they can send more frequent payloads and bigger payloads of satellites into space.
On the other side, if there are more satellites and you're able to provide more broadband internet access, you're able to send that cash back into the rocketry program. So it's really smart the way that he developed it, where he basically created this product and then made another part of his company a big customer, or user of that product. On top of that a lot of other organizations can use that space technology. So like the rockets are used to send people in this space. NASA is going to be using SpaceX rockets to send people to space. Well, they already are, so it's a pretty interesting business model that he's developed.
I think another big part of the article was that there are so many people on Earth right now who don't have internet access. That might seem really crazy to us, but when I was a reporter in North Carolina in a rural part of North Carolina, there were actually a ton of people who just had no internet access and had to live without it, because for these fiber companies or these companies that lay cable underground, the investment of adding cable to this area, wasn't worth the payoff, because there's only a few people. But the difference with satellites is that when you launch them, it covers both wealthy areas and really remote and rural areas of the world. So it actually ends up helping connect a lot of people who wouldn't have access to internet otherwise because other companies wouldn't really be willing to make that investment.
Taylor Wilson:
You can find more of Michelle's work on Twitter @Michelle_Shen10.
President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will speak today over video. Their meeting comes amid tensions related to a Russian troop buildup on the Ukraine border seen as a sign of potential invasion. U.S. Intelligence officials estimate that troops number to be about 70,000 and that an invasion could come as soon as next year. Biden said last week that he aims to create initiatives to make it difficult for Putin to invade, and if Russia were to do so, the U.S. would likely impose widespread sanctions on Russia. But Russia continues to push the U.S. to guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to the NATO Military Alliance.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky says that a group of Russians and Ukrainians are planning to attempt a coup in his country. Over the last seven years conflict between Russia and Ukraine has killed more than 14,000 people.
Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us on whatever your favorite podcast app is seven mornings a week. Thanks, as always, to PJ Elliot for his great work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Omicron reinfections studied, 80 years since Pearl Harbor: 5 Things podcast
