--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 11th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Have you recently called out sick? What about your co-workers? Yeah, it's not just you. In the last two weeks, average daily infections in the U.S. tripled to more than 700,000. Omicron is spreading fast.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, one economist calculated 5 million workers were out of commission. Bloomberg looks at the ripple effects of this, which are massive, and they spread across nearly all industries.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One airline has so many people calling out sick, it had to cancel 10% of their flights for the rest of the month. Retail is taking a hit, too. From Walmart to luxury retailers, dozens of stores have closed temporarily.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The staffing problems have also hit grocery stores, factories, and shipping ports. And if you're a parent, you probably know how this is affecting schools. My kids are taking virtual classes this morning, and it's gotten so bad that at one California school district, the superintendent stepped in to teach a high school physics class because 300 teachers were absent.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But the industry where things seem the most dire is hospitals. And for that, let's turn to the latest Ed Yong piece in The Atlantic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What Yong has done consistently well throughout the pandemic is tackle big misconceptions. And in this case, he writes about how you might think that the wave of infections from the Omicron variant won't be so bad because it seems to cause less severe COVID symptoms.
--:-- Ed Yong: Yang explains that's missing the point. Omicron is less severe, but it's more contagious, which means more people are getting sick overall. So there's still going to be a lot of people who need to be hospitalized. And that is why our medical system is so overwhelmed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Young describes a kind of slow-motion collapse, and that's the big risk for all of us right now. First, after two years of the pandemic, hospitals are short-staffed. Hospitalizations are already near record levels.
--:-- Ed Yong: And because the Omicron surge is coming on the back of all the prior variants and surges People who work at hospitals they worn down exhausted or too sick to work
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's important to realize these aren't just problems for COVID patients. Healthcare workers say all patients are in danger. One ER doctor, he gives his friends all the usual pandemic advice, you know, get a booster, wear masks. But he also says, make sure you drive safely and avoid ladders. He says hospitals are struggling so hard, you really don't want to get injured right now.
--:-- Ed Yong: Emergency rooms just can't handle things like they used to.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To bring all this back to the larger economy, the other industries that are facing slowdown, you know, travel, retail, grocery stores, they're going to be OK. According to Bloomberg, economists and investors expect the impact of workers calling in sick to be short lived.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But for hospitals, this may not be just a short blip. According to Young, the hospital staffing shortage could be with us for some time. And that has huge consequences for our collective health.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This afternoon, President Biden is traveling to Georgia to give a speech on voting rights. Democrats have been pushing national voting rights legislation for some time now. And they've been critical of new voting laws in Republican-controlled states and say new nationwide laws are needed to make sure everyone can have their say in future elections.
--:-- President Biden: [audio clip of President Biden's speech]
--:-- Shamita Basu: NBC News looks at what voting rights activists want to see from the White House in the days ahead, and it's not universal support for Biden. Several voting rights groups in Georgia say they're skipping today's speech out of protest in what they see as the White House not doing enough.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As NBC explains, what activists want to hear is a strategy to advance major voting rights bills that are already in the works. Two key bills have support from a majority of senators. These bills would update and restore protections that were established by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Among other things, they would specifically require all states to offer early voting and create a standard for voting by mail. But these bills don't have the support they need to pass. They don't have 60 votes, which means a filibuster stands in the way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some advocates say Biden who a former senator needs to pressure his old colleagues to change the rules around the filibuster That could clear the way for these bills to get to his desk and become law
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The early word from the White House is you can expect Biden to talk about changing the rules today What activists don't want is a speech that just makes a general case for protecting ballot access without a concrete plan to pass the bills.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They want to hear Biden push back against moderate Democrats who are skeptical of changing the filibuster, and they want to know that there will be follow-up after the speech is over.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today marks 20 years since the U.S. government first brought people to Guantanamo Bay for detention. This was after 9-11. They were prisoners in what was being called the War on terror.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 780 people have been held there over the years, and most of them were never charged with a crime. Some of them were returned to their home countries, but some of the others, they were relocated to a country, a culture, a place very far from home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post has done something really unusual here. It got in touch with some of the people who got out so that they could share their stories. And many are finding life after Guantanamo, brutally hard.
--:-- Abigail Hauslohner: Reporter Abigail Hauslohner went to Slovakia and spent some time with Hisham Slity. He's been in Slovakia for about seven years now, and he says he found it hard to start a new life.
--:-- Hisham Slity: He's struggling to, you know, integrate in society and to find friends and to trust people. And that is compounded by the fact that he faces, I think, very real racism in Slovakia.
--:-- Abigail Hauslohner: And real discrimination and fear from employers, from the public, from the government about the fact that he was at Guantanamo.
--:-- Hisham Slity: Much of the public does assume, fairly or unfairly, that if you were at Guantanamo, you must be guilty of something.
--:-- Abigail Hauslohner: He's felt isolated. He's had difficulty finding work, paying bills.
--:-- Hisham Slity: He told the Post that the U.S. government destroyed his life.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Sleety believes and a lot of these guys believe that Guantanamo is going to you know the legacy of what they experienced physically and psychologically and also the stigma attached to it was going to hang over them for the rest of their lives
--:-- Shamita Basu: On his second day in office President Obama issued an order to close Guantanamo That didn't happen. President Biden also wants to shut it down. But 27 of the men still held there have never been charged with a crime.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So shutting Gitmo down requires finding a place to send them. Sleedy's story offers a glimpse of what they could face if they ever walked free.
--:-- Shamita Basu: College football has a new champion, one that's been fighting for a long time to get the win.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Here's how the game ended. All the way to the end zone, and Georgia is going to conquer the Crimson Tide. Georgia beat Alabama 33-18.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This ended Georgia's 41-year wait for another national championship. Now, this was a rematch and a grudge match all at the same time.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: A rematch in that Georgia's only loss this season was to Alabama last month. It also lost the championship to Alabama in overtime back in 2018.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it was a grudge match in that Georgia coach Kirby Smart really, really wanted to beat Alabama coach Nick Saban.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Sports Illustrated explains this is a story of mentee versus mentor, a clash of coaches who have a history.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Coach Smart used to work for Coach Saban. He was on his staff for more than a decade. Saban racked up more championships than any coach in college football history.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As I says, they weren't best buddies or anything, but they had a really solid partnership.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Smart moved on and started coaching the Georgia Bulldogs. And beating his old boss, that has been his goal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last night, he finally did it. After the game, these two rivals hugged each other.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And the sportscaster grabbed Smart to ask him what it was like to finally get a different result than the last time they faced off for the title.
--:-- Kirby Smart: Well, that one will be with me for a long time. But this one will be with me for much longer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We will talk with you again tomorrow.
