Gaza Fighting to Pause for Polio Vaccinations, and Harris’s CNN Interview

from The New York Times it's the headlines I'm Tracy Mumford today's Friday August 30th here's what we're [Music] covering can you hear me loud and clear perfectly okay well first of all greetings uh greetings from Gaza and I want to update you first on the polio campaign in Gaza the World Health Organization is trying to stop an outbreak of polio a top official with the group announced they've reached a deal with Israel to pause military operations there for a brief window to try and vaccinate as many children as possible starting on Sunday the military has agreed to suspend its offensive in central Gaza from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. they'll repeat that schedule for 3 days and there will be pauses in different parts of the territory later on as health workers try to vaccinate some 650,000 kids this is a Way Forward I'm not going to say this is the ideal Way Forward but not doing anything would be really bad we have to stop this Transmission in Gaza and we have Global Health authorities have been pushing for an emergency vaccination campaign after polio was found in the Wastewater in Gaza last month and a young child was later diagnosed the first confirmed case of polio in the area in 25 years the disease has been nearly eradicated in most of the world but the 10mon long War has devastated the health services in Gaza and Aid officials say that the severely unsanitary conditions there have allowed even rare diseases to [Music] spread Madam vice president governor Wells thank you so much for sitting down with me kamla Harris gave the first major interview of her presidential campaign yesterday sitting down with CNN's Dana Bash the voters are really eager to hear what your plans are if you are elected what would you do on day one in the white house well there are a number of things I will tell you first and foremost one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class um when I look at the interview was a high stakes moment for Harris who voters have really only seen give scripted speeches rather than offthe cuff answers since she jumped into the race last month she was joined by her running mate Tim Walls though he pretty much took the back seat as Harris was pressed to lay out specifics of her policy plan so what would you do day one day one it's going to be about one implementing my plan for what I call an opportunity economy I've already laid out a number of um proposals in that regard which include what we're going to do to bring down um the cost of everyday Goods what we're going to do to invest in America's small businesses what Harris in her CNN interview on Thursday night took great pains to not put any daylight between President Biden's policy Legacy in office and what she would do if elected to determine her own right times political reporter Reed Epstein is covering Harris's campaign she embraced his economic record his stance toward Israel in Gaza his position on the border and even on fracking in the key Battleground state of Pennsylvania anything that Mr Biden is for essentially said that she is 42 and I'm very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3% the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors I mean these are themes that we can expect Harris to come back to again and again over the final weeks of the campaign and particularly in the days leading up to the September 10th debate with Donald Trump she's essentially going to argue that people can have the parts that they might have liked about the Biden years his policies without the parts of the Biden years that they didn't like primarily the president himself meanwhile Donald Trump is trying to reposition himself with voters on a key issue in this year's presidential race reproductive health I'm announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump Administration your government will pay for or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for for all costs associated with IVF treatment fertilization for women at a rally in Michigan he floated a new proposal that would mandate total coverage for invitro fertilization treatments though he didn't say how that would be paid for one cycle of ibf can cost $20,000 or more you know if you talk to them they'll say oh he really doesn't like they have ads like I'm against it it's just the opposite Trump also suggested yesterday that he might support a ballot measure that would expand abortion rights in his home state of Florida though his campaign quickly tried to downplay that previously Trump has bragged about appointing the Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn roie Wade but his new messaging seems to be part of a pattern of trying to appeal to Women Voters recent polling suggests Harris has made big gains with Women Voters in Battleground States [Music] in nearly every state in the country right now covid levels are at high or very high levels according to the CDC hospitalizations are up 600 people a week are dying from the virus and The Surge is hitting just as kids are packing back into classrooms and millions of Americans are getting together for Labor Day weekend but this is also the country's fifth summer of Co and Emily bomgardner the Times National Health correspondent has found that many people are taking the vir virus less seriously than ever before I've been talking to people about how they're living with the virus and and what their life looks like now and I've just come across this Collective psychology of people who are ready to move on Emily has been covering Co since 2020 people who used to mask everywhere they went and have always have a mask in their pocket don't even own any masks anymore a lot of people who used to test before going out to a social event or after traveling and now people avoiding tests because they don't want to know whether they have the virus they don't want to have to change their plans one reason that the culture of covid has changed so much is because this is a virus that still evades our understanding even epidemiologist understanding these these variants are evolving faster than the flu and so there's really no predictability these surges come at different times throughout the year every time and another reason is that people have become extremely confused one person I spoke to said that he would test if he felt that he was supposed to but he couldn't even keep track of what the CDC recommendations were anymore at this point the CDC has started recommending that people deal with covid the same way they deal with the flu and the same way they deal with RSV they recommend if you have a fever stay at home for 24 hours after the fever is gone make sure your symptoms are improving and then when you go back out in public make sure you wear a mask and and protect others but there's really no specific Co guidance anymore and on some level there's also a bit of a calister that's developed culturally a lot of epidemiologists say that even though 600 deaths a week is really heartbreaking when you compare that to what we were seeing at the peak of the pandemic when you compare that to 20,000 deaths a week it's something that we seem to just have decided as a society that we are collectively willing to live with and finally cruise ships are getting bigger a lot bigger the world's largest cruise ship ever the icon of the Seas launched earlier this year capable of carrying nearly 8,000 people it weighs over a quar million tons and it's so big that they've divided it up into eight quote unquote neighborhoods but there's been so much demand for cruises that now Royal Caribbean announced it's adding more Mega ships with at least four more on order other Cruise companies are also eyeing big big big expansions the massive scale has raised concerns about the environmental impact of the ships a report from an environmental advocacy Group found the world's largest cruise ships are now twice as big as they were 20 years ago if they continue growing at the current rate by next year they will be eight times larger than the Titanic those are the headlines today on The Daily Michael Barbaro shares a personal take on the legacy of TV talk show Pioneer Phil Donahue you can listen on the times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts this show is made by Jessica Meer yon Stewart and me Tracy Mumford with help from Isabella Anderson and Jake Lucas original theme by Dan Powell special thanks to Lissa Anderson Zoe Murphy and Paula Schuman the headlines will be back on Monday [Music]