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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore 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.
That'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. A lot of you are traveling out there
this Memorial Day weekend, so you're already noticing the high
costs and lots of people. As the economy continues to
rebound from the pandemic, we're seeing vacations getting more expensive
with rising airfare and hotel rates. The price of gas
is even making road trips more expensive too. If you're
(00:49):
thinking about planning a vacation, start planning very early. For
more on all of this will speak to Leslie Joseph's
airline reporter at CNBC. I think we got a little
bit used to those bars and fairs we were seeing
in many of us. Most of us were not booking
them last year. And even into the beginning of one.
Then all of a sudden, a bunch of people in
America did get vaccinated and encourage this huge uptick in
(01:13):
demand for travel. People have been closed up in their
homes for the better part of fifteen months, and they're
ready to go out and travel, whether you're vaccinated or not.
Attractions are starting to open up. Your Disneyland that opens
very recently in other places, Restaurants are opening in cities,
and even in New York, we're starting to see things
return a little bit more to normal. Yeah, you know,
(01:33):
it's not just the air fare as well road trips.
The cost of gas is going up, and for a
time during the pandemic, that's what a lot of people
resorted to. Let's do a quick road trip something, just
to get out of the house. And even gas prices
are going up, so all around. You know, it's kind
of funny too, because you know, some of these increases
and everything, you know, they're not that pre pandemic levels
(01:54):
just yet. They're getting towards it. But even still, it's
just kind of coming out of this year, we're looking
at these prices and just saying, man, that's expensive already.
I think we got used to those really cheap prices
during the pandemic, and you mentioned road trips. We've seen
gasoline prices national average is the highest that we've seen since.
So it was the sort of alternative during the pandemic. Okay,
I'm gonna go out and avoid other people. I don't
(02:16):
feel like going to an airport. I don't feel safe
for you know, whatever the reason might be. But a
lot of other people had a similar idea. Of course,
we're all getting out of our houses and driving up
demands for gasoline and what we're seeing in the airports,
and I think travelers can expect a lot of full flights.
Airlines do not have the capacity that they had in teen.
They retired a lot of aircraft, a lot of their
own employees retired or left the company, so they're not
(02:39):
operating the same number of flights that they used to.
But what they are all doing is trying to focus
on this domestic us leisure demands, and that's where everybody
is traveling, and that's where we're seeing some of the fairs.
A lot of the executives are started to say they're
at or near levels. So the chances of getting a
really good bargain are pretty much fading as we speak, right,
(03:00):
and you mentioned that, you know that domestic leisure travel,
that's an important point of distinction because business and international
travel hasn't ramped up just yet. That's still going to
take a little bit more time, and that's kind of
what helps offset these lower fairs for for all the
regular flights basically, so until those pick up will be
in this kind of mode as well. That's helping the
(03:21):
consumers somewhat their vacation or I should say in the
near term, because it will keep a lid on prices.
You know, you don't have those business travelers during the
middle of the week. If you as a vacation or
can travel in the middle of the week and take
those seats at a better price, take it. And then
also if you have a chance to travel in the
off season. The airlines are hopeful that business travel, which
is already starting to come back, we'll come back and earnest.
(03:44):
Maybe in the fall, kids are back in school and
more people are vaccinated, and companies start to loosen up
their travel restrictions for their own people, and maybe offices
open up to receive visitors. But it's not clear how
quickly that's going to happen. I mean, you have legal
departments and compliance that are dictating a lot of these
paul season. They don't want to send anyone out too
early or or risk a lawsuit. So if you can
(04:04):
travel in the fall or maybe outside of the peak season,
I would go for it. You made mention in your
article that a lot of airlines are reinstating strict rules
that they had on basic economy flights. What were those rules?
What's changing there? So one thing that happened during the
pandemic is that airlines started to lift or they have
lifted change fees, and the fees that everybody hates two
(04:27):
fifty dollars or more sometimes to change your flight, and
everybody knows the frustration of even if you have like
a family of four and you need to change for
an emergency or something along those lines, or maybe you
really like your destination, you want to stay a little
bit longer, come back sooner. For whatever reason, it's very costly,
and airlines were desperate to get people on board last year,
so they all Delta, American and United lifted change fees
(04:49):
included for international flights. Great news for consumers, but it
doesn't apply to the cheapest tickets, which is called basic economy.
They're the most restrictive. And one of the pillars of
that for most airlines is that they don't allow change fees.
So those fares exist and they'll be in buckets on
the website when you book your flight on the airline's website,
(05:10):
they're there, and the executives are not shy about this,
so that you book the next highest that will give
you a little bit more flexibility, that will allow you
to bring. For certain airlines to carry on bag on
board let's say, not board last it comes with a
seat assignment for what that's worth for you. So it's
not free changes for all. Some airlines, like Southwest, for example,
they haven't had change fees, so it wasn't much of
(05:31):
a change for them. But for the major airlines they
are keeping that. But it is for standard economy tickets.
And then you know, just kind of in keeping in
line with this whole thing of the you know, the
airline travel, the other pieces you're lodging, so hotel rates
are going up. I found a great place throughout the
pandemic that I used for a few getaways, just because
you needed to get out of the house. Uh you know,
(05:51):
I checked rates. They're just for something else again and boom,
the prices are a sky high again to the point
where you know, I don't know if I'm gonna go back.
So that's the other piece of this too, is that
you know, with the airlines going up, the hotel rates
are also rising. The hotel race are rising. It's more
difficult to get a rental car if you're not staying
at a hotel. Even some of the home rentals. The
(06:13):
competition is sky high. And this spring and summer. Late
spring and summer are always the peak seasons for travel
in the US. I mean, kids are off from school.
People generally take their vacations when the weather is nicer.
But you have all this pence up demands for over
a year. And maybe people like you said, took those
road trips last year, but this is just kind of
like a bottleneck of leisure and everyone's trying to take
(06:34):
a vacation at the same time, so the competition is there.
My advice would just be as flexible as possible. If
you can travel in the off season, if you can
travel in the middle of the week, take those opportunities
where you can, and maybe even your work allows you
to work remotely and you could extend your vacation and
you don't have to come back on a set date
if you have that luxury. Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at CNBC,
(06:56):
thank you very much for joining us. Thank you a
little more on the economy, who's out there driving in
person spending as we recover from the pandemic. Right now,
vaccinated consumers have been less likely to go out to
restaurants and entertainment venues than those who don't plan on
getting the vaccine. Early data shows that the vaccinated are
(07:18):
still cautious and are avoiding large crowds. Many states that
have had higher vaccination rates have had a slower rebound
of in person spending. Experts say that those consumers should
be back at full force by summer. For more on this,
will speak to Sarah Cheney Cambon, reporter at the Wall
Street Journal. Seeing vaccinated Americans as in now are less
(07:40):
likely to go out to places like restaurants and salons
and entertainment venues than people who are not vaccinated. One
analyst I spoke with um put it pretty well, and
he said that the vaccinated are proceeding with cautious optimism.
So they are going out more than they were in January,
for instance, but they're just not going out as much
(08:01):
as people who don't plan to get the vaccine. And
you know, I'm interested in this story for for a
number of reasons, obviously right to see how the economy
is doing, how people are getting out there, but kind
of also holds up a mirror to myself in a way.
I am vaccinated, but a lot of this makes sense.
We're in lockdown for basically a year, you know, told
constantly to be careful about stuff, social distancing, mask wearing.
(08:25):
Coming out of it's going to take a little bit
of doing. And even for myself, I've had that pent
up demand to go do so many things, but I
haven't even been to a movie yet, partly because there's
not that many great movies out just yet. I think
next month the big blockbusters start rolling out again. But
even still, it is that kind of cautious optimism. I
find myself hesitating sometimes. You know, these COVID vaccines have
(08:47):
been rolling out for a few months now, and so
you have not insignificant portion of the population that's fully vaccinated.
But I think it's just it's so much more than
just getting that such a shot in terms of what's
going to change people's willingness to go out, I think
a lot of it is that the vaccine roll up
is incomplete, so even if you are fully vaccinated, maybe
(09:10):
you're waiting for more people to get vaccinated. And also,
you know, you have this fact that public health guidance
from like the CDC is shifting. You know, they recently
used some face mask of restrictions. But it takes a
while for that sort of news to disseminate and for
like meaningfully change people's behavior. So let's get into some
(09:31):
of the numbers that we're seeing because there's some interesting
things in there. Let's start off with foot traffic. You
mentioned the article this is a proxy for spending. So
what are we seeing as far as that goes when
people are going to airports, hotels, theaters, all this other stuff.
So foot traffic data from this company, it's a research
or data analysis company called Earnest Research, shows that foot
(09:53):
traffic at airports, hotels, and theaters has actually been climbing
faster in states with vaccination rates below compared with states
with higher rates. And so again it supports that idea
that higher vaccination rates are not what necessarily triggering much
(10:14):
faster growth in spending and people's willingness to go out.
For states that voted for President Biden and they have
higher vaccination rates, their rebounds of in person spending are
a little slower than those that maybe had more relaxed
rules and voted for President Trump exactly. So the foot
traffic data from Earnest Research shows that Blue states have
(10:37):
had a slower rebounds than Red states. And you know,
there are multiple factors that could explain what's going on.
I don't think it's just one thing. Blue states had
tighter business restrictions really throughout the pandemic, and they're starting
to lift those restrictions, so we'll kind of see whether
those states start to catch up more with Red states.
(10:57):
And then also they were hit earlier are on with
the COVID pandemic. A lot of the states in the
northeast were hit really hard, so there could be some
scarring effects there, for instance, that have kind of kept
people from going out in those areas throughout the pandemic.
You know, when it comes to online shopping too, that's
obviously something that played such a huge role throughout the pandemic.
(11:20):
That's just another big thing. I haven't stepped in a
store to buy clothes physically for so long. I can
do it online, and so these kind of things are
going to slow that return as well. And we did
see that the earnest research data show that online spending
has accounted for a higher share of spending and these
(11:40):
more vaccinated blue states than in red states. And so
it'll be interesting to see how much of that continues
as the economy reopens more and hopefully COVID cases continue
to go down. You know, how much of that online
spending differences is actually going to stick around. It seems
like everybody kind of reason that summer is going to
(12:01):
be this big point where many restrictions across the country
are going to be lifted, more people will be vaccinated,
So everybody's looking for summer for that real big boom. Yeah.
The analyst I spoke with for this story, we're saying that, yeah,
right now, vaccinated people are not going out as much
as not vaccinated people, but that will probably shift some
(12:23):
over the summer as hopefully more people become comfortable kind
of resuming their normal everyday activities just going inside restaurants
and traveling more, and it maybe even going to concerts
or movie theaters if good movies come out right right,
that's what I'm looking forward to all of those, hopefully
very soon. Sarah Cheney kim Von, reporter at the Wall
(12:47):
Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
so much for having me off. Finally, this week, a
new treatment known as optogenetic therapy has given a blind
man some of his vision back. Light activated proteins were
inserted into eye nerve cells and paredled special goggles that
emit flashes of amber hued light. This combination allowed the
(13:10):
man with a degenerative eye disease to see and count
objects when he previously could only detect just some light.
For more on how this man got some limited vision back,
will speak to Tina Hessman Say, senior writer at Science News.
So this is a type of therapy that's called optogenetic therapy.
It's a little different from some of the gene therapies
(13:32):
you might have heard about before, which replace a faulty
copy of a june with a healthy copy. And it's
also different from gene editing, which goes in and fixes
a particular mutation. So, uh, those those types of therapy
(13:52):
are good for people who still have some of the
cells in their retina that ellect the light. Um. Those
those are you've heard probably rod and cone cells. Um,
they're also called photoreceptors. So those cells um die in
(14:14):
people with these degenerative eye diseases, including the one that
this man has UM and when they die, he lose
your vision. But there are still other nerve cells in
the retina that are still alive and still capable of working,
(14:35):
but they're just not getting signals. So what these researchers
have done is taken a gene that will produce a
light sensitive protein and they put them in these other
nerve cells that are still there in the retina. And
so now those nerve cells can respond to light. Yeah.
(14:58):
It's interesting because before this man could see some light,
but he couldn't pick out motion or really identify objects.
And with this now he's as I mentioned, he's been
able to pick out a couple of moving objects and
see some things. The way things work in the either layered.
So with this gene therapy, they're targeting the far back
(15:19):
of the eye, which is sending those signals to the brain. Yeah,
that's right. So how those selves um that they put
these this this light sensitive gene into They're called ganglion cells,
and they're sort of the last line of the retina
(15:39):
before you send off the signals about what you're seeing
to the brain. So normally they would get varying signals
from the other layers in the retina and they would
they would fire off in pulses. So the gangling cell
(16:01):
doesn't know what to do with a constant source of light,
so that's why you have to send pulses to it,
because it responds to change in light levels. They've done
this type of optogenetic therapy before with different light sources.
It used to be more of like a blue light source,
(16:22):
but I guess it was very straining for a lot
of people. So with this one they use more of
an amber light source and that's why they use the
goggles to put that light source in there as well.
So just a lot of interesting things and modifications that
they had to do just to get him to be
able to see a little bit. Yeah. So so these
goggles actually take advantage of a lot of technology that's
(16:44):
been developed for cameras. For instance, UM setting light levels
because your eye can respond to a huge range of
light levels from the dimnest starlight to the brightest sunny
day at the beach. UM. But these proteins that are
(17:05):
now responding to light only respond to a very narrow window.
And so the goggles have to like take all these
different light levels and put it into that narrow band
that the these proteins respond to. And so now with
(17:25):
all of this, how optimistic are doctors for the future?
And the man himself, has he had any reaction to
being able to pick out certain things now? UM? So
the man only speaks French, so I wasn't able to
talk with him specifically. But you know the doctors are,
they're cautiously optimistic. This is you know, one person UM
(17:51):
they have they have done this with UM. I think
they said nine other people so far in this clinical trial. UM.
And this man got the lowest dose of these light
activated proteins that that they felt would be UM workable.
(18:12):
And so other people in the trial are getting higher
doses so they may have better responses. But with covid UH,
it was very difficult for them to come into the
lab to do the testing and training that they needed
to do because this is not like a therapy day,
you can just go in how them shoot something into
(18:34):
your eye and then you can see. It takes months
actually for the proteins to be made, and then it
takes a while to train the brain to make sense
of what you're seeing because there are very few cells
that contain these proteins, and you know, they're getting it
(18:56):
in a different um information sent than they normally would
when you see, so it takes a while for the
brain to figure all of that out. UM. So hopefully
we'll have more data on these other people too, but
you know, this is this is a great first. Tina
(19:17):
Hessman Say, senior writer at Science News, thank you very
much for joining us. You're welcome. That's it for this weekend.
Be sure to check out The Daily Dive every Monday
through Friday. Join us on social media at Daily Dive
plod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave
us a comment, give us a rating, and tell us
(19:38):
the stories that you're interested in. Follow The Daily Dive
and I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Dive has been engineered by
Tony Sorrentina. I'm Oscar Rameiras in Los Angeles, and this
was your daily dive. Weekend, additional
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore 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.
That'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. A lot of you are traveling out there
this Memorial Day weekend, so you're already noticing the high
costs and lots of people. As the economy continues to
rebound from the pandemic, we're seeing vacations getting more expensive
with rising airfare and hotel rates. The price of gas
is even making road trips more expensive too. If you're
(00:49):
thinking about planning a vacation, start planning very early. For
more on all of this will speak to Leslie Joseph's
airline reporter at CNBC. I think we got a little
bit used to those bars and fairs we were seeing
in many of us. Most of us were not booking
them last year. And even into the beginning of one.
Then all of a sudden, a bunch of people in
America did get vaccinated and encourage this huge uptick in
(01:13):
demand for travel. People have been closed up in their
homes for the better part of fifteen months, and they're
ready to go out and travel, whether you're vaccinated or not.
Attractions are starting to open up. Your Disneyland that opens
very recently in other places, Restaurants are opening in cities,
and even in New York, we're starting to see things
return a little bit more to normal. Yeah, you know,
(01:33):
it's not just the air fare as well road trips.
The cost of gas is going up, and for a
time during the pandemic, that's what a lot of people
resorted to. Let's do a quick road trip something, just
to get out of the house. And even gas prices
are going up, so all around. You know, it's kind
of funny too, because you know, some of these increases
and everything, you know, they're not that pre pandemic levels
(01:54):
just yet. They're getting towards it. But even still, it's
just kind of coming out of this year, we're looking
at these prices and just saying, man, that's expensive already.
I think we got used to those really cheap prices
during the pandemic, and you mentioned road trips. We've seen
gasoline prices national average is the highest that we've seen since.
So it was the sort of alternative during the pandemic. Okay,
I'm gonna go out and avoid other people. I don't
(02:16):
feel like going to an airport. I don't feel safe
for you know, whatever the reason might be. But a
lot of other people had a similar idea. Of course,
we're all getting out of our houses and driving up
demands for gasoline and what we're seeing in the airports,
and I think travelers can expect a lot of full flights.
Airlines do not have the capacity that they had in teen.
They retired a lot of aircraft, a lot of their
own employees retired or left the company, so they're not
(02:39):
operating the same number of flights that they used to.
But what they are all doing is trying to focus
on this domestic us leisure demands, and that's where everybody
is traveling, and that's where we're seeing some of the fairs.
A lot of the executives are started to say they're
at or near levels. So the chances of getting a
really good bargain are pretty much fading as we speak, right,
(03:00):
and you mentioned that, you know that domestic leisure travel,
that's an important point of distinction because business and international
travel hasn't ramped up just yet. That's still going to
take a little bit more time, and that's kind of
what helps offset these lower fairs for for all the
regular flights basically, so until those pick up will be
in this kind of mode as well. That's helping the
(03:21):
consumers somewhat their vacation or I should say in the
near term, because it will keep a lid on prices.
You know, you don't have those business travelers during the
middle of the week. If you as a vacation or
can travel in the middle of the week and take
those seats at a better price, take it. And then
also if you have a chance to travel in the
off season. The airlines are hopeful that business travel, which
is already starting to come back, we'll come back and earnest.
(03:44):
Maybe in the fall, kids are back in school and
more people are vaccinated, and companies start to loosen up
their travel restrictions for their own people, and maybe offices
open up to receive visitors. But it's not clear how
quickly that's going to happen. I mean, you have legal
departments and compliance that are dictating a lot of these
paul season. They don't want to send anyone out too
early or or risk a lawsuit. So if you can
(04:04):
travel in the fall or maybe outside of the peak season,
I would go for it. You made mention in your
article that a lot of airlines are reinstating strict rules
that they had on basic economy flights. What were those rules?
What's changing there? So one thing that happened during the
pandemic is that airlines started to lift or they have
lifted change fees, and the fees that everybody hates two
(04:27):
fifty dollars or more sometimes to change your flight, and
everybody knows the frustration of even if you have like
a family of four and you need to change for
an emergency or something along those lines, or maybe you
really like your destination, you want to stay a little
bit longer, come back sooner. For whatever reason, it's very costly,
and airlines were desperate to get people on board last year,
so they all Delta, American and United lifted change fees
(04:49):
included for international flights. Great news for consumers, but it
doesn't apply to the cheapest tickets, which is called basic economy.
They're the most restrictive. And one of the pillars of
that for most airlines is that they don't allow change fees.
So those fares exist and they'll be in buckets on
the website when you book your flight on the airline's website,
(05:10):
they're there, and the executives are not shy about this,
so that you book the next highest that will give
you a little bit more flexibility, that will allow you
to bring. For certain airlines to carry on bag on
board let's say, not board last it comes with a
seat assignment for what that's worth for you. So it's
not free changes for all. Some airlines, like Southwest, for example,
they haven't had change fees, so it wasn't much of
(05:31):
a change for them. But for the major airlines they
are keeping that. But it is for standard economy tickets.
And then you know, just kind of in keeping in
line with this whole thing of the you know, the
airline travel, the other pieces you're lodging, so hotel rates
are going up. I found a great place throughout the
pandemic that I used for a few getaways, just because
you needed to get out of the house. Uh you know,
(05:51):
I checked rates. They're just for something else again and boom,
the prices are a sky high again to the point
where you know, I don't know if I'm gonna go back.
So that's the other piece of this too, is that
you know, with the airlines going up, the hotel rates
are also rising. The hotel race are rising. It's more
difficult to get a rental car if you're not staying
at a hotel. Even some of the home rentals. The
(06:13):
competition is sky high. And this spring and summer. Late
spring and summer are always the peak seasons for travel
in the US. I mean, kids are off from school.
People generally take their vacations when the weather is nicer.
But you have all this pence up demands for over
a year. And maybe people like you said, took those
road trips last year, but this is just kind of
like a bottleneck of leisure and everyone's trying to take
(06:34):
a vacation at the same time, so the competition is there.
My advice would just be as flexible as possible. If
you can travel in the off season, if you can
travel in the middle of the week, take those opportunities
where you can, and maybe even your work allows you
to work remotely and you could extend your vacation and
you don't have to come back on a set date
if you have that luxury. Leslie Joseph's airline reporter at CNBC,
(06:56):
thank you very much for joining us. Thank you a
little more on the economy, who's out there driving in
person spending as we recover from the pandemic. Right now,
vaccinated consumers have been less likely to go out to
restaurants and entertainment venues than those who don't plan on
getting the vaccine. Early data shows that the vaccinated are
(07:18):
still cautious and are avoiding large crowds. Many states that
have had higher vaccination rates have had a slower rebound
of in person spending. Experts say that those consumers should
be back at full force by summer. For more on this,
will speak to Sarah Cheney Cambon, reporter at the Wall
Street Journal. Seeing vaccinated Americans as in now are less
(07:40):
likely to go out to places like restaurants and salons
and entertainment venues than people who are not vaccinated. One
analyst I spoke with um put it pretty well, and
he said that the vaccinated are proceeding with cautious optimism.
So they are going out more than they were in January,
for instance, but they're just not going out as much
(08:01):
as people who don't plan to get the vaccine. And
you know, I'm interested in this story for for a
number of reasons, obviously right to see how the economy
is doing, how people are getting out there, but kind
of also holds up a mirror to myself in a way.
I am vaccinated, but a lot of this makes sense.
We're in lockdown for basically a year, you know, told
constantly to be careful about stuff, social distancing, mask wearing.
(08:25):
Coming out of it's going to take a little bit
of doing. And even for myself, I've had that pent
up demand to go do so many things, but I
haven't even been to a movie yet, partly because there's
not that many great movies out just yet. I think
next month the big blockbusters start rolling out again. But
even still, it is that kind of cautious optimism. I
find myself hesitating sometimes. You know, these COVID vaccines have
(08:47):
been rolling out for a few months now, and so
you have not insignificant portion of the population that's fully vaccinated.
But I think it's just it's so much more than
just getting that such a shot in terms of what's
going to change people's willingness to go out, I think
a lot of it is that the vaccine roll up
is incomplete, so even if you are fully vaccinated, maybe
(09:10):
you're waiting for more people to get vaccinated. And also,
you know, you have this fact that public health guidance
from like the CDC is shifting. You know, they recently
used some face mask of restrictions. But it takes a
while for that sort of news to disseminate and for
like meaningfully change people's behavior. So let's get into some
(09:31):
of the numbers that we're seeing because there's some interesting
things in there. Let's start off with foot traffic. You
mentioned the article this is a proxy for spending. So
what are we seeing as far as that goes when
people are going to airports, hotels, theaters, all this other stuff.
So foot traffic data from this company, it's a research
or data analysis company called Earnest Research, shows that foot
(09:53):
traffic at airports, hotels, and theaters has actually been climbing
faster in states with vaccination rates below compared with states
with higher rates. And so again it supports that idea
that higher vaccination rates are not what necessarily triggering much
(10:14):
faster growth in spending and people's willingness to go out.
For states that voted for President Biden and they have
higher vaccination rates, their rebounds of in person spending are
a little slower than those that maybe had more relaxed
rules and voted for President Trump exactly. So the foot
traffic data from Earnest Research shows that Blue states have
(10:37):
had a slower rebounds than Red states. And you know,
there are multiple factors that could explain what's going on.
I don't think it's just one thing. Blue states had
tighter business restrictions really throughout the pandemic, and they're starting
to lift those restrictions, so we'll kind of see whether
those states start to catch up more with Red states.
(10:57):
And then also they were hit earlier are on with
the COVID pandemic. A lot of the states in the
northeast were hit really hard, so there could be some
scarring effects there, for instance, that have kind of kept
people from going out in those areas throughout the pandemic.
You know, when it comes to online shopping too, that's
obviously something that played such a huge role throughout the pandemic.
(11:20):
That's just another big thing. I haven't stepped in a
store to buy clothes physically for so long. I can
do it online, and so these kind of things are
going to slow that return as well. And we did
see that the earnest research data show that online spending
has accounted for a higher share of spending and these
(11:40):
more vaccinated blue states than in red states. And so
it'll be interesting to see how much of that continues
as the economy reopens more and hopefully COVID cases continue
to go down. You know, how much of that online
spending differences is actually going to stick around. It seems
like everybody kind of reason that summer is going to
(12:01):
be this big point where many restrictions across the country
are going to be lifted, more people will be vaccinated,
So everybody's looking for summer for that real big boom. Yeah.
The analyst I spoke with for this story, we're saying that, yeah,
right now, vaccinated people are not going out as much
as not vaccinated people, but that will probably shift some
(12:23):
over the summer as hopefully more people become comfortable kind
of resuming their normal everyday activities just going inside restaurants
and traveling more, and it maybe even going to concerts
or movie theaters if good movies come out right right,
that's what I'm looking forward to all of those, hopefully
very soon. Sarah Cheney kim Von, reporter at the Wall
(12:47):
Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
so much for having me off. Finally, this week, a
new treatment known as optogenetic therapy has given a blind
man some of his vision back. Light activated proteins were
inserted into eye nerve cells and paredled special goggles that
emit flashes of amber hued light. This combination allowed the
(13:10):
man with a degenerative eye disease to see and count
objects when he previously could only detect just some light.
For more on how this man got some limited vision back,
will speak to Tina Hessman Say, senior writer at Science News.
So this is a type of therapy that's called optogenetic therapy.
It's a little different from some of the gene therapies
(13:32):
you might have heard about before, which replace a faulty
copy of a june with a healthy copy. And it's
also different from gene editing, which goes in and fixes
a particular mutation. So, uh, those those types of therapy
(13:52):
are good for people who still have some of the
cells in their retina that ellect the light. Um. Those
those are you've heard probably rod and cone cells. Um,
they're also called photoreceptors. So those cells um die in
(14:14):
people with these degenerative eye diseases, including the one that
this man has UM and when they die, he lose
your vision. But there are still other nerve cells in
the retina that are still alive and still capable of working,
(14:35):
but they're just not getting signals. So what these researchers
have done is taken a gene that will produce a
light sensitive protein and they put them in these other
nerve cells that are still there in the retina. And
so now those nerve cells can respond to light. Yeah.
(14:58):
It's interesting because before this man could see some light,
but he couldn't pick out motion or really identify objects.
And with this now he's as I mentioned, he's been
able to pick out a couple of moving objects and
see some things. The way things work in the either layered.
So with this gene therapy, they're targeting the far back
(15:19):
of the eye, which is sending those signals to the brain. Yeah,
that's right. So how those selves um that they put
these this this light sensitive gene into They're called ganglion cells,
and they're sort of the last line of the retina
(15:39):
before you send off the signals about what you're seeing
to the brain. So normally they would get varying signals
from the other layers in the retina and they would
they would fire off in pulses. So the gangling cell
(16:01):
doesn't know what to do with a constant source of light,
so that's why you have to send pulses to it,
because it responds to change in light levels. They've done
this type of optogenetic therapy before with different light sources.
It used to be more of like a blue light source,
(16:22):
but I guess it was very straining for a lot
of people. So with this one they use more of
an amber light source and that's why they use the
goggles to put that light source in there as well.
So just a lot of interesting things and modifications that
they had to do just to get him to be
able to see a little bit. Yeah. So so these
goggles actually take advantage of a lot of technology that's
(16:44):
been developed for cameras. For instance, UM setting light levels
because your eye can respond to a huge range of
light levels from the dimnest starlight to the brightest sunny
day at the beach. UM. But these proteins that are
(17:05):
now responding to light only respond to a very narrow window.
And so the goggles have to like take all these
different light levels and put it into that narrow band
that the these proteins respond to. And so now with
(17:25):
all of this, how optimistic are doctors for the future?
And the man himself, has he had any reaction to
being able to pick out certain things now? UM? So
the man only speaks French, so I wasn't able to
talk with him specifically. But you know the doctors are,
they're cautiously optimistic. This is you know, one person UM
(17:51):
they have they have done this with UM. I think
they said nine other people so far in this clinical trial. UM.
And this man got the lowest dose of these light
activated proteins that that they felt would be UM workable.
(18:12):
And so other people in the trial are getting higher
doses so they may have better responses. But with covid UH,
it was very difficult for them to come into the
lab to do the testing and training that they needed
to do because this is not like a therapy day,
you can just go in how them shoot something into
(18:34):
your eye and then you can see. It takes months
actually for the proteins to be made, and then it
takes a while to train the brain to make sense
of what you're seeing because there are very few cells
that contain these proteins, and you know, they're getting it
(18:56):
in a different um information sent than they normally would
when you see, so it takes a while for the
brain to figure all of that out. UM. So hopefully
we'll have more data on these other people too, but
you know, this is this is a great first. Tina
(19:17):
Hessman Say, senior writer at Science News, thank you very
much for joining us. You're welcome. That's it for this weekend.
Be sure to check out The Daily Dive every Monday
through Friday. Join us on social media at Daily Dive
plod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave
us a comment, give us a rating, and tell us
(19:38):
the stories that you're interested in. Follow The Daily Dive
and I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Dive has been engineered by
Tony Sorrentina. I'm Oscar Rameiras in Los Angeles, and this
was your daily dive. Weekend, additional
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