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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Monday, April 19th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening to Apple News Today for the first time, welcome. On this show, we bring you a quick news digest in just a few minutes to help you get your day started. It's a mix of the most pressing news stories of the day and excellent explanatory journalism that goes beyond the headlines.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find us every weekday morning in the Today feed in the Apple News app or at the top of the audio tab. We're an Apple podcast, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today is the day the Biden administration has said every eligible adult in the country who wants a vaccine will be able to get one. The pace of the national vaccine rollout has picked up in recent weeks. The CDC said on Sunday that one in four eligible adults have now been fully vaccinated. And according to Bloomberg's vaccine tracker, more than three million adults were vaccinated every day over the course of the last week.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But there's still a long way to go. And as more shots become available, the notion that not everyone will actually choose to get a shot threatens the hope that life can return to normal. In order to reach herd immunity, a certain percentage of the population needs to be inoculated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, when both the CDC and FDA paused the Johnson & Johnson vaccine rollout, it reignited fears about when we'll reach that critical percentage. To help us understand how the government is hoping to sustain the pace of mass vaccinations, I spoke with Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dr. Murthy, what will it take to convince people who are still on the fence?
--:-- Vivek Murthy: When we look at the data on why people may be hesitant to take a vaccine, concern about side effects is one of the top reasons. And, you know, when people do have side effects, they tend to be short-lived. And what we always have to think about with these vaccines, Chumita, is the alternative, right? The alternative is to risk getting COVID. And this is not an illness to be trifled with.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so the risk-benefit really does tilt for the vast, vast majority of people in favor of benefit when it comes to getting the vaccine.
--:-- Vivek Murthy: That's why so many of us, especially those of us who are doctors, who have seen so many vaccines over the years, who have advised patients on them, look at this and say, wow, this is actually one of the better vaccines that we have available in general. Highly effective, good safety profile, and worth taking to protect yourself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I want to ask you about side effects more specifically and how you're tracking them for different groups. I know there have been a lot of recent news stories about how women tend to have stronger symptoms after receiving the vaccine. Can you talk about why reactions tend to show up differently for example based on biological sex?
--:-- Vivek Murthy: Well, Shamita, it really important if people do have symptoms for them to share those symptoms with their doctors. But I can assure you this, as more information becomes available, if signals do pop up in the data that indicate, hey, there are concerning patterns here in terms of side effects that we need to warn people about, the CDC and FDA will do that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And you saw evidence of that with the Johnson & Johnson pause. The FDA and CDC, in fact, got criticized in some ways for saying, were you acting too prematurely? You know, did this really merit pausing? But again, I think you see here just how careful those institutions are being.
--:-- Vivek Murthy: And they're saying, yeah, even though it's rare, we still think it merits investigation because we want, number one, to protect people, but two, for them to know that we are taking their concerns seriously. And that's why they pour over that data so carefully.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The prevailing advice has been to not make vaccine messaging political. But the fact is that hesitancy is breaking out along political lines. What does that mean for you, Dr. Murthy, as a public health messenger? How do you make sure that the right message reaches the right groups of people?
--:-- Vivek Murthy: We're a big, diverse country. Not everyone trusts the same people. Not everyone listens to the same news sources. What you learn when you're in medical school and in the practice of medicine is number one, not to make assumptions about people, to recognize that how we all think about medical treatment and about illnesses and how we make decisions on whether we take a vaccine are so unique to our life experience.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And sometimes it may track with our politics or our upbringing or our faith, or our age or our gender, but ultimately it's unique to us. And what that means is the following. It means that we have to ensure that the messages that we share are carried by messengers who are trusted.
--:-- Vivek Murthy: What's already happened in the last few months gives me great faith because we started in the fall with very low rates of confidence in vaccines. And we've seen those numbers climb and climb and climb such that now, look, more than 60% of adults say they've either gotten the vaccine or definitely planned to get the vaccine, which is a big jump from where we were in December.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that still means that there are a good chunk of people who are uncertain, right? And so this is why it's so important for us to get that information out to people because knowledge is power.
--:-- Vivek Murthy: Thank you so much, Dr. Murthy. I really appreciate it. And I'm so glad you stopped by for this conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thanks, Dr. Murthy. So nice to talk to you today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We turn now to some other top stories. First, to Minnesota, where demonstrations against police killings continued over the weekend. People there gathered outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department in Minneapolis on Sunday. It been eight days since a police officer shot and killed Daunte Wright.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Will Stansel is a research fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School, in The Atlantic, he makes the case that there's something going on in suburbs like Brooklyn Center that gives rise to the increase in deadly police shootings. He compares this place to another well-known suburb, one that was hollowed out by decades of disinvestment and white flight, Ferguson, Missouri.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When a white police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014, the protests that erupted in Ferguson spread across the country. It was what ignited the Black Lives Matter movement. Stansel argues it's no coincidence that we're seeing the same patterns play out year after year in similar suburban environments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He points to a phenomenon called resegregation. See, Ferguson and Brooklyn Center were once mostly white, middle-class enclaves. But when middle-class Black families started to move in, white families quickly moved out, taking with them their higher earnings and the privileges U.S. society affords them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Eventually, the poverty rate in these types of suburbs went up, and these communities wound up with the same types of segregation that used to define most city centers. There's a key difference here. NPR points out often the racial power dynamics of suburbs don't evolve. Local government staff and police forces often don't change as the town's demographics shift.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They stay in their roles for years. NPR also says things are starting to shift. The mayor of Brooklyn Center, Mike Elliott, is Black and a Liberian immigrant. He became the city's first mayor of color in 2019. And at a recent news conference, Mayor Elliott said that he believed none of the police officers who serve the city actually live in the city.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he promised to work on changing that dynamic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Alexei Navalny may only have days to live. That's according to several people with ties to the leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On CNN's State of the Union, President Joe Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, issued a warning if Navalny dies in prison.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He said there will be consequences. We have communicated to the Russian government that what happens to Mr. Navalny in their custody is their responsibility and they will be held accountable by the international community.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal is reporting Navalny's team says he's been in a hunger strike for three weeks. This is his way of protesting Russia's decision not to allow him to get care from his own doctor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In response to this, the Kremlin says Navalny is receiving proper care. Prison authorities there say as of this morning they decided to transfer Navalny to a hospital that treats convicts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Navalny's team is now calling for new mass protests across Russia. They want people to take to the streets at the same time President Putin is scheduled to give his annual address to Russia's national legislature.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And while all of this is happening, the country's prosecutor general filed a request to designate Navalny's anti-corruption foundation an extremist organization.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One Russia expert tells the journal, that designation is going to allow authorities to label anyone associated with Navalny or his cause as terrorists and put them all in jail.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tensions between Russia and the U.S. have been escalating over the past few months. Just last month, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on Russia. And over the weekend, President Biden called Russia's position on Navalny totally unfair and totally inappropriate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Although the administration hasn't publicly said what specific actions the U.S. and its allies might take if Navalny does die in a Russian prison.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So if you decide to take one of Regina Mitchell's online cooking classes, you'll notice her very specific instructions. You want to secure your knife on the side of your cutting board or at the very top of your cutting board. That way, when you go across your board, because we're visually impaired and blind, we won't cut ourselves.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mitchell is blind, and the L.A. Times profiled her in her classes. Her goal is to give people living with disabilities the confidence and skills they need in the kitchen to prepare their own food.
--:-- Shamita Basu: About one out of every four people in the U.S. lives with some type of disability, and there's an often overlooked link between disabilities and food insecurity. While there's a lot of different reasons for that, Mitchell says the lack of accessible kitchens plays a huge role.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mitchell lost her sight as an adult. In her courses, she urges people to expand the language they use to talk about food while cooking. For example, instead of talking about how a dish is supposed to look, people can lean in on other cues like smell, texture, consistency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, the things you actually remember after you eat a great meal. The L.A. Times spoke with one disability advocate who says we need to move toward universal design. Make it commonplace to modify kitchens and appliances for all types of users in the same way that we build ramps to create access to buildings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that shift requires completely new ways of thinking about how we make food. And in the end, universal design could benefit us all.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories like that L.A. Times profile of Regina Mitchell and her inclusive cooking classes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
