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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explored the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. One of the top stories throughout the week
was Texas. They were battered by a winner storm that
left millions without power, and while much of that power
has been restored after days and freezing temperatures, there's still
a food and water crisis there. The events of the
past week also exposed huge flaws in the Texas power grid.
(00:50):
For more on this whole story, will speak to Josh Letterman,
correspondent at NBC News. It was a whole combination of
many different factors you can think of energy systems like
supply and demand, and here in Texas you had a
real one to punch where the demand was off the
charts because you had so many people freezing in their homes,
(01:10):
turning up the heat trying to warm their homes and businesses,
creating all kinds of demand for electricity. And then on
the supply side, you just did not have enough power
to go around because you had so many power generators
that were knocked offline because of the frigid weather. And
although initially you had some politicians in Texas who were
blaming the fact that some wind turbines that would normally
(01:33):
be genering electricity had iced over and were not able
to produce electricity, really the vast majority of the problem
about why they didn't have enough power to go around
in Texas had to do with those traditional sources we
call them thermal sources, but we're talking natural gas whole,
and even a nuclear plant that was knocked offline. In
the case of those natural gas plants, which make up
(01:55):
a large amount of the energy supply in Texas, you
had issues like the pipe that bring the natural gas
to those plants freezing, the fact that the states had
to make sure that homes got gas to heat their
homes before they supplied it to the power plants that
use that gas to make power, and in fact, looking
at what the authorities, they're planned for on a cold
(02:17):
day for what they need. Renewable sources like wind and
soul are actually performed better or compared to their expectations
than did the old traditional sources like coal and natural gas.
Tell me a little bit about their independent grid and
why they're not attached to the rest of the US.
And then the other problem was that weatherization efforts, they
(02:37):
just really didn't make the attempt to go full bore
on it. They only were kind of preparing for peak demand,
like peak Winner demand that they thought they could get
through it. But the Winner storm was much worse than
they anticipated, and they just were not able to meet
that demand later. Yeah, that's right, And those two things
you just outlined are directly connected because the fact that
(02:58):
the energy generation an equipment in Texas was not weatherized
is a direct result from the fact that they do
have this independent energy grid. So Texas they didn't want
to be part of sort of the national system in
which you basically have a huge network on the east
side of the country and one on the west side
of the country. It's all interconnected, so if power isn't
(03:21):
really being generated in one part of the country, they
can borrow at a time of need from another part
and kind of equal everything out. That can't happen with
Texas because it's disconnected from that grid, and they really
wanted their independence from the federal government. This is a
state where politicians for years have talked about seceding from
the US. They value their independence. But one of the
(03:42):
things that means is that the grid there in Texas,
it's not subject to regulation from what's known as FIRK,
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which says, if you're going
to have power lines that cross state lines, you're gonna
have to follow certain rules like making sure that your
power plan are able to withstand really cold temperatures, really
(04:03):
hot temperatures, be able to operate under these conditions. Texas
didn't have to follow those regulations because they kind of
went on their own with their Texas energy grid, and
as a result, they made the decision and not take
the kinds of steps such as weatherizing their gas plants
and they're putting installation on pipes, putting special coatings on
(04:23):
their windmills that would make them able to operate even
when you have all of this ice and cold temperatures.
And now we see all the after effects. There's food
and drinking water shortages now they're making recommendations that people
have to boil their water before they use it, and
hospitals also facing you know, water pressure and heat shortages also.
So these are just the far reaching effects of all
(04:44):
of that. But what this whole thing does is it
really shines a light on what happens in these extreme
weather events, which we keep seeing more and more. Scientists
predict this is going to happen more. And what do
we rely on now. Batteries are still a long way
off from being a chief source of power storage, especially
in these big states like this, and as I mentioned,
(05:05):
you know, just climate change, these big weather events keep
happening more and more and take a toll on these
power grades. That's absolutely right, and we should note, you know,
it's difficult to attribute any one particular weather event to
climate change, but climate scientists tell us the kind of
thing we're seeing in Texas is certainly more likely to
happen in the future as the planet gets warmer and
(05:27):
the climate less stable. And beyond that, even though the
power issues in this case did not stem from wind
and solar, as we move as a nation towards more
reliance on renewable sources like wind and solar, so that
we can stop admitting as much and try to prevent
further climate change. Those sources are going to have some issues,
(05:50):
such as the fact that the sun doesn't shine twenty
four hours a day, the wind isn't always blowing, and
that's why our energy experts tell us that we're going
to need to do a lot more as far as resilience,
including those batteries that you mentioned. We're gonna need to
have ways to store power when we are generating it
so that we can release it onto the system when
we need it most and might not be able to
(06:12):
generate it. That technology is coming very quickly. It's developing.
It's still very expensive, but it's the kind of thing
that major companies are working hard to try to get
scaled up so that we can have more reliable system
and hopefully prevent folks in Texas and everywhere else in
the US from having to go through things like this
ever in the future. Josh Letterman, correspondent at NBC News,
(06:32):
thank you very much for joining us, thanks for having me.
Vaccine rollout continues, but the process of getting a coronavirus
vaccine appointment can seem like trying to get a PS
five with all available appointments gone before you know it.
This can especially be hard if you're helping out a
parent or grandparent navigate some of the sites. Part of
(06:53):
the problem is poorly designed websites and also too many
vaccine sites from state, local and hospitals all having their
own web portals. For tips on how to master the
vaccine empoyment websites, will speak to Jeffrey Fowler, tech columnists
at the Washington Post. This is a case study and
how more technology does not always make things run better.
(07:14):
So the federal government is in charge of buying the
vaccine and giving it to the state. So the states
made their own websites systems for people to book appointments.
Then within states, counties made their own systems for people
to websites for people to book appointments. Then local hospitals
and clinics made their own systems with the supply they
(07:34):
were getting. Then on top of that, now we have
pharmacies this week, in particular opening up with a new
direct supply from the Feds, the CVS, Walgreens with their
own systems and apps take away from this is like,
there are so many websites that you have to check.
There's no centralization going on here. So if you want
to get these really precious, high demand appointment thoughts, in
(07:57):
many cases, you have to basically make it your all
time job to check websites all day long and pressure
reload on them and try to hunt out scraps of
information that might give you a little bit of an
advantage to you know, book that are playing before somebody
else does. It actually has a lot in common with
snagging Beyonce ticket. You know, the same skills that are
involved being kind of an extreme online shopper are involved here,
(08:20):
except we're asking senior citizens to do this within senior
citizens in America don't even have broadband internet at home,
So this is a real big equity problem. It's really
failing seniors and also people of color and other sort
of communities that are really at risk of thespiras, and
as I mentioned, people that are helping their parents and
grandparents do it sometimes in other states. So exactly, I
(08:43):
noticed that you're in your article. Some of my coworkers
are trying to do the same thing. So there's difficulties
all around. Okay, let's get into the tips on some
of the best practices for this. First off, it's gonna
most most likely take multiple attempts to get through on this,
so don't be discouraged and you've gotta stick with it.
But one of the things you mentioned is have all
of your information ready to be easily copy pasted, because
(09:05):
in a lot of these websites, every single time you
have to re enter that information. So there's all this
information that we discovered by experimenting with these websites that
they were going to be asked to enter in some
cases every time just to check if their appointments available.
I'm talking about you know, I D stuff, your health
insurance code and cards and all that kind of stuff.
(09:26):
One of the things that would have made that go
a lot better for my parents, we discovered later on,
is if they just typed it all into a word
processing documents that was on their computer in front of them,
because you're going to have to enter this stuff in
so many times. And look, a lot of seniors are
a little bit slower at typing, and it's not their fault.
You know, as you get older, it's harder to you know,
type really fast, so just put it in one place
so you have it, you can copy and paste it in. Yeah,
(09:48):
and when time is of the essence, you know, in
the time that it takes you to type that stuff out,
all the vaccine appointments might have been booked up. That's
what's happening across the country right now. There's millions of people.
They're just taking so long to type and the information,
and that the employments are gone, and that's just so frustrating.
Don't be afraid of using the phone. Everybody's you know,
sending people to the websites, but there are also people
(10:09):
that can help you out my phone. California has a
line you can call. Massachusetts has a line just for
seniors to help them. Definitely, you're going to see the
pharmacies and other people trying to direct people through the
internet because it's more efficient for them. It's more efficient
for them to have you reloading their website all day
to try to figure out when new stuff comes online.
But look, if you're a senior and you're not comfortable
(10:30):
with that, that's okay. Find this phone number. You might
have to stay you on hold for a while or
whatever it is, but it is available to you. And
related to that, like look again, if you're a senior
that just doesn't have the equipment or the expertise to
do this, like look for help. There are actually a
lot of groups around the country that are trying to
sort of be vaccine angels and and and connect people
(10:53):
with resources. You know, if you don't know where to
find one, just call your local public library. Librarians are
really smart and they're totally nected into their communities and
they'll know who can help you. One of the lines
that I love in your article the people having the
most success getting employments are the ones with the best information.
So one of the key tips would be to sign
up for alerts, you know, so you know when the
(11:14):
doses are coming. You know that on this day they're
going to have doses. Let's get really busy on trying
to sign up. There's you know, various kinds of alerts
available from all the sorts of different authorities who have
the vaccine. In some cases, the alerts are actually sort
of disappointing, like in California. Pretty much if you sign
up for the alert, all that you'll get is a
text message when your particular demographic is able to get
(11:38):
a shot, but other places they're getting more tailored, more
specific in the alerts or beyond. That is all about information,
So hunt out these scraps of information you can about
when a new vaccine comes online, like for example, in Florida,
you get the vaccine to Publix, the supermarket that has
a pharmacy in it. People learned that public puts the
(11:59):
new appoint wents online at seven am every morning, so
that meant that I get six in Florida. People are
there at the my website, presson reload, ready to go
to get it. Ultimately, that's how my parents got their shot.
My mom was just pressing reload on this site because
she heard a tip on the local TV news that
they were going to be adding some new slots that day.
Last question I have, I guess it's a twofold question,
(12:21):
how long did it take you to get your parents appointment?
And just like the last overall big tip, like what
is going to push people through on these sites? The
most it took us probably about two weeks once it
was really available to them in Massachusetts. And I learned
a lot from that process and I share that sort
of learnings from that in my piece. Let me give
(12:41):
you a two part answer to two years deceptively simple questions.
The thing that matters the most is being persistent. The
people who are getting these shots are the ones who
are just either them or their their loved ones and
their helpers are just kind of hammering it every day
and not giving up because this really matters. It's really important.
But the thing we didn't talk about, but I just
meant to, like flags that people will need to be
(13:02):
careful about, is fraud. There are a lot of sketchy
people out there, and they're taking advantage of the lack
of information in this moment and the fear about it
to try to take advantage of seniors. Folks should definitely
be very careful look at the source of the information.
Start your journey and figuring this out on authoritative websites.
You either on government websites. If you don't know what
(13:22):
those are, go to the Washington Post. We've got links
to all of them. A p has links to all
of them. And if somebody you know send you an
email or text messages you about an appointment, that could
be legit, but it also might not be so good
on the phone and call whoever said that they were
reaching out to you and make sure it's really them,
because the last thing you want to do is end up,
you know, having your identity stolen or someone taking the
(13:43):
money or whatever. Like it's sad, but but it is
a thing that folks need to be aware of. Jeffrey Fowler,
tech calumnist at the Washington Post, thank you very much
for joining us. You bet more on the coronavirus. We've
been in this good news bad news phase. The bad
news continues to be these coronavirus variants that are taking
(14:04):
hold across the United States, but the rate of infections
are starting to trend in the right direction and hospitalizations
are also going down. And while we're seeing these better numbers,
experts are divided on why. They chalk it up to
four different possibilities. Good behavior and mask wearing, improved vaccine distribution,
changing seasonality, and more cases going undetected because of less testing.
(14:26):
For more and why the coronavirus cases are dropping, will
speak to Reese Tebow, reporter at the Washington Post. I
don't think anyone knows the right answer why these numbers
are going down, and I don't think it'd be accurate
to isolate one factor and say that that's the definitive reason,
but experts are floating a number of possible explanations. So
the four I get into in my story are good behavior,
(14:50):
you know, people obeying social distancing guidelines, wearing masks, that
kind of thing, and then getting vaccines. We're seeing a
quickening pace of vaccinations. And then the possibility that the
data is actually lying to us, that it might be
obscuring something and that maybe cases aren't dropping quite as
much as we're seeing in the numbers. And then there's
(15:11):
this issue of seasonality. So the virus is a respiratory virus,
and we know that respiratory viruses tend to slow their
spread in warmer climates. So let's expand on on all
of these. Obviously, even you make mention in the article too,
there's caveats with everything, and we don't know exactly. So
first off, good behavior, you know, mask wearing, social distancing,
(15:32):
among everything, that really seems to be the thing that
really helps keep the virus at bay throughout the entirety
of the pandemic. So far, when people are strict about
these things, cases are not spreading as much. And when
things get relaxed, we see the numbers boom as we
saw during the holidays and and all that, So that
really is cheap among them. I think you've got to
keep practicing those things because that's really what helps a lot.
(15:54):
But vaccine distribution, let's get into that one a little bit.
You know, we need about seventy people to getting vaccines
for it to be super effective. They say, I think
we're about twelve percent at last count. So what are
we seeing there the folks that are chalking these following
numbers up to vaccines. They're pointing to the rising rates
of vaccinations. So last week we saw about the average
(16:16):
of one point six million vaccinations administered per day. That's
a pretty impressive number, especially considering President Biden set the
benchmark at one point five million, and there were a
lot of people who said after he noted that that
that might be a little lofty. But last week we
met and exceeded that. So that's a good sign. But
a lot of leading up a deemiologists have said it's
(16:37):
just too soon for vaccines to be having a major impact.
You know, like you said, if there were some forty
million people who have received at least their first dose,
that's about twelve percent of the US population, and that's
well short of that herd immunity threshold of seventy So
vaccinations are probably helping a bit, but I think it's
too early to attribute this big death all to vaccines.
(17:02):
Seasonality that's an interesting one, you know, with respiratory diseases.
Obviously in the cold months and winter and all that,
these things usually seem to climb up. I guess we're
going to be coming out of flu season also pretty soon.
So they're saying that this could be very helpful to us,
where we'll see a drop in this from now until
at least August or so. Like you said, you know,
(17:22):
with other with other respiratory viruses, we've seen that fall
off when the weather starts to improve, and kind of
looking ahead on the calendar, that's a positive point here.
As for right now, I don't know, indec it's not
very warm. It still feels very much like the winter.
We're seeing freezing temperatures everywhere right now, so that's much
more of you know, maybe in the weeks to come
(17:43):
we'll be having a positive impact. But as for impacting
the numbers right now at this moment ure, in the
weeks prior, that's a little harder Sell. I think as
far as cases going undetected, this is a very interesting one.
We're obviously very focused on vaccine distribution, and what we
might be seeing is kind of a decrease in testing,
(18:04):
maybe even a reduced demand for testing as uh, you know,
more people kind of have gotten it and so and so.
So that's an interesting one. Help us walk through that one.
You remember, in the thick of the winter search, there
was just this explosion in cases, and there was a
similar explosion in people getting tested and coming out of
(18:25):
that winter search, you know, there was a backlog of
tests that didn't get processed over the holidays, and as
they were processed, we saw on the numbers there was
another spike. And folks have said that maybe a bit
of an artificial spike, just sort of processing the backlogs.
But what it means is when we've seen in weeks
following the numbers go down, they're coming down from an
even higher peak. But it is still important to note
(18:48):
that testing actually has fallen off. It's fallen off steadily
over the last few weeks. From I think in early
January there were about two million tests being processed per day,
and now I think We're about one point five one
point six million per day. That is pointing to the
fact that, you know, maybe fewer people are getting tested
and fewer cases are being captured. But you also have
(19:09):
to look at hospitalizations which are going down as well.
So you know, that's a reason to be hopeful that
this only plays a minor role, if one at all.
Reese Tebow, reporter at the Washington Post, thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks so much for having the ascar.
Don't forget to join us on social media at Dailey
(19:31):
Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow us on
I Heard Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
I'm Oscar Ramirez and this is the Daily Dive Weekend
addition
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explored the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. One of the top stories throughout the week
was Texas. They were battered by a winner storm that
left millions without power, and while much of that power
has been restored after days and freezing temperatures, there's still
a food and water crisis there. The events of the
past week also exposed huge flaws in the Texas power grid.
(00:50):
For more on this whole story, will speak to Josh Letterman,
correspondent at NBC News. It was a whole combination of
many different factors you can think of energy systems like
supply and demand, and here in Texas you had a
real one to punch where the demand was off the
charts because you had so many people freezing in their homes,
(01:10):
turning up the heat trying to warm their homes and businesses,
creating all kinds of demand for electricity. And then on
the supply side, you just did not have enough power
to go around because you had so many power generators
that were knocked offline because of the frigid weather. And
although initially you had some politicians in Texas who were
blaming the fact that some wind turbines that would normally
(01:33):
be genering electricity had iced over and were not able
to produce electricity, really the vast majority of the problem
about why they didn't have enough power to go around
in Texas had to do with those traditional sources we
call them thermal sources, but we're talking natural gas whole,
and even a nuclear plant that was knocked offline. In
the case of those natural gas plants, which make up
(01:55):
a large amount of the energy supply in Texas, you
had issues like the pipe that bring the natural gas
to those plants freezing, the fact that the states had
to make sure that homes got gas to heat their
homes before they supplied it to the power plants that
use that gas to make power, and in fact, looking
at what the authorities, they're planned for on a cold
(02:17):
day for what they need. Renewable sources like wind and
soul are actually performed better or compared to their expectations
than did the old traditional sources like coal and natural gas.
Tell me a little bit about their independent grid and
why they're not attached to the rest of the US.
And then the other problem was that weatherization efforts, they
(02:37):
just really didn't make the attempt to go full bore
on it. They only were kind of preparing for peak demand,
like peak Winner demand that they thought they could get
through it. But the Winner storm was much worse than
they anticipated, and they just were not able to meet
that demand later. Yeah, that's right, And those two things
you just outlined are directly connected because the fact that
(02:58):
the energy generation an equipment in Texas was not weatherized
is a direct result from the fact that they do
have this independent energy grid. So Texas they didn't want
to be part of sort of the national system in
which you basically have a huge network on the east
side of the country and one on the west side
of the country. It's all interconnected, so if power isn't
(03:21):
really being generated in one part of the country, they
can borrow at a time of need from another part
and kind of equal everything out. That can't happen with
Texas because it's disconnected from that grid, and they really
wanted their independence from the federal government. This is a
state where politicians for years have talked about seceding from
the US. They value their independence. But one of the
(03:42):
things that means is that the grid there in Texas,
it's not subject to regulation from what's known as FIRK,
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which says, if you're going
to have power lines that cross state lines, you're gonna
have to follow certain rules like making sure that your
power plan are able to withstand really cold temperatures, really
(04:03):
hot temperatures, be able to operate under these conditions. Texas
didn't have to follow those regulations because they kind of
went on their own with their Texas energy grid, and
as a result, they made the decision and not take
the kinds of steps such as weatherizing their gas plants
and they're putting installation on pipes, putting special coatings on
(04:23):
their windmills that would make them able to operate even
when you have all of this ice and cold temperatures.
And now we see all the after effects. There's food
and drinking water shortages now they're making recommendations that people
have to boil their water before they use it, and
hospitals also facing you know, water pressure and heat shortages also.
So these are just the far reaching effects of all
(04:44):
of that. But what this whole thing does is it
really shines a light on what happens in these extreme
weather events, which we keep seeing more and more. Scientists
predict this is going to happen more. And what do
we rely on now. Batteries are still a long way
off from being a chief source of power storage, especially
in these big states like this, and as I mentioned,
(05:05):
you know, just climate change, these big weather events keep
happening more and more and take a toll on these
power grades. That's absolutely right, and we should note, you know,
it's difficult to attribute any one particular weather event to
climate change, but climate scientists tell us the kind of
thing we're seeing in Texas is certainly more likely to
happen in the future as the planet gets warmer and
(05:27):
the climate less stable. And beyond that, even though the
power issues in this case did not stem from wind
and solar, as we move as a nation towards more
reliance on renewable sources like wind and solar, so that
we can stop admitting as much and try to prevent
further climate change. Those sources are going to have some issues,
(05:50):
such as the fact that the sun doesn't shine twenty
four hours a day, the wind isn't always blowing, and
that's why our energy experts tell us that we're going
to need to do a lot more as far as resilience,
including those batteries that you mentioned. We're gonna need to
have ways to store power when we are generating it
so that we can release it onto the system when
we need it most and might not be able to
(06:12):
generate it. That technology is coming very quickly. It's developing.
It's still very expensive, but it's the kind of thing
that major companies are working hard to try to get
scaled up so that we can have more reliable system
and hopefully prevent folks in Texas and everywhere else in
the US from having to go through things like this
ever in the future. Josh Letterman, correspondent at NBC News,
(06:32):
thank you very much for joining us, thanks for having me.
Vaccine rollout continues, but the process of getting a coronavirus
vaccine appointment can seem like trying to get a PS
five with all available appointments gone before you know it.
This can especially be hard if you're helping out a
parent or grandparent navigate some of the sites. Part of
(06:53):
the problem is poorly designed websites and also too many
vaccine sites from state, local and hospitals all having their
own web portals. For tips on how to master the
vaccine empoyment websites, will speak to Jeffrey Fowler, tech columnists
at the Washington Post. This is a case study and
how more technology does not always make things run better.
(07:14):
So the federal government is in charge of buying the
vaccine and giving it to the state. So the states
made their own websites systems for people to book appointments.
Then within states, counties made their own systems for people
to websites for people to book appointments. Then local hospitals
and clinics made their own systems with the supply they
(07:34):
were getting. Then on top of that, now we have
pharmacies this week, in particular opening up with a new
direct supply from the Feds, the CVS, Walgreens with their
own systems and apps take away from this is like,
there are so many websites that you have to check.
There's no centralization going on here. So if you want
to get these really precious, high demand appointment thoughts, in
(07:57):
many cases, you have to basically make it your all
time job to check websites all day long and pressure
reload on them and try to hunt out scraps of
information that might give you a little bit of an
advantage to you know, book that are playing before somebody
else does. It actually has a lot in common with
snagging Beyonce ticket. You know, the same skills that are
involved being kind of an extreme online shopper are involved here,
(08:20):
except we're asking senior citizens to do this within senior
citizens in America don't even have broadband internet at home,
So this is a real big equity problem. It's really
failing seniors and also people of color and other sort
of communities that are really at risk of thespiras, and
as I mentioned, people that are helping their parents and
grandparents do it sometimes in other states. So exactly, I
(08:43):
noticed that you're in your article. Some of my coworkers
are trying to do the same thing. So there's difficulties
all around. Okay, let's get into the tips on some
of the best practices for this. First off, it's gonna
most most likely take multiple attempts to get through on this,
so don't be discouraged and you've gotta stick with it.
But one of the things you mentioned is have all
of your information ready to be easily copy pasted, because
(09:05):
in a lot of these websites, every single time you
have to re enter that information. So there's all this
information that we discovered by experimenting with these websites that
they were going to be asked to enter in some
cases every time just to check if their appointments available.
I'm talking about you know, I D stuff, your health
insurance code and cards and all that kind of stuff.
(09:26):
One of the things that would have made that go
a lot better for my parents, we discovered later on,
is if they just typed it all into a word
processing documents that was on their computer in front of them,
because you're going to have to enter this stuff in
so many times. And look, a lot of seniors are
a little bit slower at typing, and it's not their fault.
You know, as you get older, it's harder to you know,
type really fast, so just put it in one place
so you have it, you can copy and paste it in. Yeah,
(09:48):
and when time is of the essence, you know, in
the time that it takes you to type that stuff out,
all the vaccine appointments might have been booked up. That's
what's happening across the country right now. There's millions of people.
They're just taking so long to type and the information,
and that the employments are gone, and that's just so frustrating.
Don't be afraid of using the phone. Everybody's you know,
sending people to the websites, but there are also people
(10:09):
that can help you out my phone. California has a
line you can call. Massachusetts has a line just for
seniors to help them. Definitely, you're going to see the
pharmacies and other people trying to direct people through the
internet because it's more efficient for them. It's more efficient
for them to have you reloading their website all day
to try to figure out when new stuff comes online.
But look, if you're a senior and you're not comfortable
(10:30):
with that, that's okay. Find this phone number. You might
have to stay you on hold for a while or
whatever it is, but it is available to you. And
related to that, like look again, if you're a senior
that just doesn't have the equipment or the expertise to
do this, like look for help. There are actually a
lot of groups around the country that are trying to
sort of be vaccine angels and and and connect people
(10:53):
with resources. You know, if you don't know where to
find one, just call your local public library. Librarians are
really smart and they're totally nected into their communities and
they'll know who can help you. One of the lines
that I love in your article the people having the
most success getting employments are the ones with the best information.
So one of the key tips would be to sign
up for alerts, you know, so you know when the
(11:14):
doses are coming. You know that on this day they're
going to have doses. Let's get really busy on trying
to sign up. There's you know, various kinds of alerts
available from all the sorts of different authorities who have
the vaccine. In some cases, the alerts are actually sort
of disappointing, like in California. Pretty much if you sign
up for the alert, all that you'll get is a
text message when your particular demographic is able to get
(11:38):
a shot, but other places they're getting more tailored, more
specific in the alerts or beyond. That is all about information,
So hunt out these scraps of information you can about
when a new vaccine comes online, like for example, in Florida,
you get the vaccine to Publix, the supermarket that has
a pharmacy in it. People learned that public puts the
(11:59):
new appoint wents online at seven am every morning, so
that meant that I get six in Florida. People are
there at the my website, presson reload, ready to go
to get it. Ultimately, that's how my parents got their shot.
My mom was just pressing reload on this site because
she heard a tip on the local TV news that
they were going to be adding some new slots that day.
Last question I have, I guess it's a twofold question,
(12:21):
how long did it take you to get your parents appointment?
And just like the last overall big tip, like what
is going to push people through on these sites? The
most it took us probably about two weeks once it
was really available to them in Massachusetts. And I learned
a lot from that process and I share that sort
of learnings from that in my piece. Let me give
(12:41):
you a two part answer to two years deceptively simple questions.
The thing that matters the most is being persistent. The
people who are getting these shots are the ones who
are just either them or their their loved ones and
their helpers are just kind of hammering it every day
and not giving up because this really matters. It's really important.
But the thing we didn't talk about, but I just
meant to, like flags that people will need to be
(13:02):
careful about, is fraud. There are a lot of sketchy
people out there, and they're taking advantage of the lack
of information in this moment and the fear about it
to try to take advantage of seniors. Folks should definitely
be very careful look at the source of the information.
Start your journey and figuring this out on authoritative websites.
You either on government websites. If you don't know what
(13:22):
those are, go to the Washington Post. We've got links
to all of them. A p has links to all
of them. And if somebody you know send you an
email or text messages you about an appointment, that could
be legit, but it also might not be so good
on the phone and call whoever said that they were
reaching out to you and make sure it's really them,
because the last thing you want to do is end up,
you know, having your identity stolen or someone taking the
(13:43):
money or whatever. Like it's sad, but but it is
a thing that folks need to be aware of. Jeffrey Fowler,
tech calumnist at the Washington Post, thank you very much
for joining us. You bet more on the coronavirus. We've
been in this good news bad news phase. The bad
news continues to be these coronavirus variants that are taking
(14:04):
hold across the United States, but the rate of infections
are starting to trend in the right direction and hospitalizations
are also going down. And while we're seeing these better numbers,
experts are divided on why. They chalk it up to
four different possibilities. Good behavior and mask wearing, improved vaccine distribution,
changing seasonality, and more cases going undetected because of less testing.
(14:26):
For more and why the coronavirus cases are dropping, will
speak to Reese Tebow, reporter at the Washington Post. I
don't think anyone knows the right answer why these numbers
are going down, and I don't think it'd be accurate
to isolate one factor and say that that's the definitive reason,
but experts are floating a number of possible explanations. So
the four I get into in my story are good behavior,
(14:50):
you know, people obeying social distancing guidelines, wearing masks, that
kind of thing, and then getting vaccines. We're seeing a
quickening pace of vaccinations. And then the possibility that the
data is actually lying to us, that it might be
obscuring something and that maybe cases aren't dropping quite as
much as we're seeing in the numbers. And then there's
(15:11):
this issue of seasonality. So the virus is a respiratory virus,
and we know that respiratory viruses tend to slow their
spread in warmer climates. So let's expand on on all
of these. Obviously, even you make mention in the article too,
there's caveats with everything, and we don't know exactly. So
first off, good behavior, you know, mask wearing, social distancing,
(15:32):
among everything, that really seems to be the thing that
really helps keep the virus at bay throughout the entirety
of the pandemic. So far, when people are strict about
these things, cases are not spreading as much. And when
things get relaxed, we see the numbers boom as we
saw during the holidays and and all that, So that
really is cheap among them. I think you've got to
keep practicing those things because that's really what helps a lot.
(15:54):
But vaccine distribution, let's get into that one a little bit.
You know, we need about seventy people to getting vaccines
for it to be super effective. They say, I think
we're about twelve percent at last count. So what are
we seeing there the folks that are chalking these following
numbers up to vaccines. They're pointing to the rising rates
of vaccinations. So last week we saw about the average
(16:16):
of one point six million vaccinations administered per day. That's
a pretty impressive number, especially considering President Biden set the
benchmark at one point five million, and there were a
lot of people who said after he noted that that
that might be a little lofty. But last week we
met and exceeded that. So that's a good sign. But
a lot of leading up a deemiologists have said it's
(16:37):
just too soon for vaccines to be having a major impact.
You know, like you said, if there were some forty
million people who have received at least their first dose,
that's about twelve percent of the US population, and that's
well short of that herd immunity threshold of seventy So
vaccinations are probably helping a bit, but I think it's
too early to attribute this big death all to vaccines.
(17:02):
Seasonality that's an interesting one, you know, with respiratory diseases.
Obviously in the cold months and winter and all that,
these things usually seem to climb up. I guess we're
going to be coming out of flu season also pretty soon.
So they're saying that this could be very helpful to us,
where we'll see a drop in this from now until
at least August or so. Like you said, you know,
(17:22):
with other with other respiratory viruses, we've seen that fall
off when the weather starts to improve, and kind of
looking ahead on the calendar, that's a positive point here.
As for right now, I don't know, indec it's not
very warm. It still feels very much like the winter.
We're seeing freezing temperatures everywhere right now, so that's much
more of you know, maybe in the weeks to come
(17:43):
we'll be having a positive impact. But as for impacting
the numbers right now at this moment ure, in the
weeks prior, that's a little harder Sell. I think as
far as cases going undetected, this is a very interesting one.
We're obviously very focused on vaccine distribution, and what we
might be seeing is kind of a decrease in testing,
(18:04):
maybe even a reduced demand for testing as uh, you know,
more people kind of have gotten it and so and so.
So that's an interesting one. Help us walk through that one.
You remember, in the thick of the winter search, there
was just this explosion in cases, and there was a
similar explosion in people getting tested and coming out of
(18:25):
that winter search, you know, there was a backlog of
tests that didn't get processed over the holidays, and as
they were processed, we saw on the numbers there was
another spike. And folks have said that maybe a bit
of an artificial spike, just sort of processing the backlogs.
But what it means is when we've seen in weeks
following the numbers go down, they're coming down from an
even higher peak. But it is still important to note
(18:48):
that testing actually has fallen off. It's fallen off steadily
over the last few weeks. From I think in early
January there were about two million tests being processed per day,
and now I think We're about one point five one
point six million per day. That is pointing to the
fact that, you know, maybe fewer people are getting tested
and fewer cases are being captured. But you also have
(19:09):
to look at hospitalizations which are going down as well.
So you know, that's a reason to be hopeful that
this only plays a minor role, if one at all.
Reese Tebow, reporter at the Washington Post, thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks so much for having the ascar.
Don't forget to join us on social media at Dailey
(19:31):
Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow us on
I Heard Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
I'm Oscar Ramirez and this is the Daily Dive Weekend
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