--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Monday, December 7th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: California Attorney General Javier Becerra was tapped as President-elect Joe Biden's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. With cases of COVID-19 spiking across the country, Becerra has his work cut out for him. He's going to have to mount a federal response to a pandemic that's decimating our country's hospital systems.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In South Dakota, patients with COVID-19 are being sent home with oxygen tanks just to keep beds open for sicker patients. A hospital in Texas sent patients across state lines to Oklahoma, where hospitals were less overwhelmed. One doctor in Nebraska said the idea that there will always be a hospital bed available if you need one. It's just not a safe assumption right now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As The Atlantic explains, hospitals are already past their breaking points. They're running out of beds, out of staff, which means fewer people who are sick and need hospital care are getting it. The Atlantic's COVID tracking project has been recording the number of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals each week. Its reporters analyzed the data and found that the percentage of admissions of these patients has been dropping from about 9.5% of COVID-19 cases in August and September down to a little more than 7% in November.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Put simply, patients who normally might have been admitted are now being sent home instead. And this strain on health care systems is being felt the most in rural areas of America, where 61% of hospitals have no intensive care unit. The death rate in rural parts of the country is nearly three and a half times higher than in metropolitan areas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And because their hospital staff and resources were so limited to begin with, as the pandemic spreads, it means these rural areas can quickly find themselves in crisis. And hospital beds are just one part of this equation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: NPR and Kaiser Health News take us to Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. It's a small town. Only about 900 people live there. 63 Kurt Poppenfuss is the only full emergency room doctor there. And at the end of October, he started feeling sick. He tested positive for COVID. He was admitted to the hospital in Denver.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This one doctor is a critical part of care in this town. Without him, trauma patients might have to be sent 40 miles away to the nearest hospital. Now, luckily, that didn't have to happen. A few doctors were able to pick up some of Papenfuse's shifts, including one doctor who lives in Fort Worth, Texas. That is a 10-hour drive to Cheyenne Wells.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And with case counts ticking up across the country, there really aren't a lot of doctors who are available to drive long distances to cover shifts at other hospitals. Dr. Popenfus was discharged from the Denver Hospital, but he had to be readmitted a week later. Now, he's worried about whether he'll ever be able to practice medicine again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He tells NPR the virus impacted his critical thinking. He needs to be cognitively approved before going back to work. And he says don't expect him back in action anytime soon.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You know, we've been hearing a lot about how resources at hospitals are stretched thin right now. And this NPR reporting is a good reminder as we gear up for this winter stretch that especially for rural hospitals, the problem is not just a shortage of ICU beds, but also a shortage of healthy staff.
--:-- Shamita Basu: How would you feel if someone got a COVID-19 vaccine before you only because they knew who to call or who to pay to get one? It could happen. We've already seen some wealthy, powerful people get better access to testing and to treatment. Now that vaccines are getting closer to distribution, the medical publication Stat reports on how privileged Americans might get them first.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The connected, the rich. Some of these folks will absolutely try to cut the line. That's according to Stat, who spoke with medical experts and ethicists.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One way to skip to the front, we can expect the definition of essential workers and high risk to be fudged a little bit. Yeah, say a celebrity or a well-connected American has a mild case of asthma. If a doctor were to classify their mild asthma as severe, that could bump them up in the line.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The worry is wealthy patients will pressure doctors to classify them as high risk and push them up the priority list. And some doctors might give in since they want to keep their high-paying clients happy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And then there essential workers. These are supposed to be folks, a lot of people of color, doing the in-person work required to keep the economy going. You know, people staffing grocery stores, meat processing plants, and local transit, also teachers, police, and firefighters.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, it's up to state health departments to define who is essential. It's likely you'll see a lot of industries lobby for this classification, like Wall Street banks. Did you know several states already passed executive orders classifying finance as an essential industry, which could make it possible for Wall Street CEOs and other highly paid executives to get quicker access to the vaccine?
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's this idea that's simmering in the background of this stat piece. Like, this can't be allowed, right? It feels morally questionable for people who are wealthy or well-connected to be able to do this.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Well, several of the ethicists that Stat spoke to point out, this is how the U.S. healthcare system is designed. You'll get preferential treatment if you can pay for it. So when we talk about people who cut the line for the vaccine, it doesn't necessarily mean they're breaking the law. They're doing what our healthcare system allows them to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The next Hollywood blockbuster probably is not just coming to theaters near you. You might actually be able to enjoy it opening weekend from your sofa with a bag of homemade popcorn on your lap.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Last week, Warner Media, which is one of the biggest movie producers in the world, announced all of its 2021 movies are going to be released in theaters and on its streaming service, HBO Max, at the same time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some industry watchers are saying this could be the end of the road for movie theaters. Yeah, the big movie theater chains have been struggling during the pandemic. AMC said it could run out of money by early next year. Another major chain, Regal Cinemas, has closed all of its locations indefinitely.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So this announcement from WarnerMedia is the first real sign that big studios might be trying to change strategy. But it also a gamble.
--:-- Shamita Basu: David Sims covers Culture for the Atlantic and he explains blockbuster films cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce plus all the money needed for marketing campaigns.
--:-- David Sims: An industry executive told Bloomberg after the news broke he got dozens of calls and texts from actors, producers, and investors who expected to share in profits from upcoming Warner Brothers films. Now, they were worried under this new model, they'd make way less money than expected.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Warner Media is the first major movie producer to do this, but there is a chance that others could follow suit. Bloomberg reports Disney and NBC Universal have both been devoting more attention and resources to their streaming platforms, Disney Plus and Peacock, and other studios are headed in the same direction.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You have to wonder, is opening night ever going to have the same energy? I mean, imagine it's some hugely anticipated movie. Like in my family, it would be Star Wars. Is watching at home ever going to be the same as standing online with other superfans waiting to see that movie on the big screen?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: A sprinkle of asteroid dust could help us solve the mystery of how life began on Earth. And it only took scientists six years and 3.2 billion miles of space travel to collect what looks like just a few grains of rice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yeah, this weekend, a Japanese space probe called the Hayabusa 2 completed a huge mission. As the Wall Street Journal explains, it was sent into space six years ago to reach an asteroid. And once it got there, it collected a tiny sample from under the asteroid's surface.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This weekend, the probe flew back over to Earth and finally dropped off those little specks of dust. The hope is that asteroid dust contains the same materials that existed 4.6 billion years ago, just before Earth and other planets formed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, if so, those carbon-rich grains could help us understand how it is that you and I exist, you know, the building blocks of life. And the mission isn't over yet. This probe is going to stay in space and it plans to visit another asteroid before rendezvousing back here to Earth in the year 2031.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more on the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
