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The federal government is scrambling to contain monkeypox · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, August 5th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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  First, just a quick look at some big news on a deal to move ahead on the Democrats' climate and healthcare spending bill: Senator Kyrsten Sinema is now on board. To get there, Democrats agreed to scale back some taxes, but also add a tax on stock buybacks.
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  The bill's now expected to pass and eventually be signed into law by Biden. You can read more on the Apple News app.
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  Monkeypox is now a national public health emergency in the United States. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra says the government is stepping up.
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  Xavier Becerra: We're prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus, and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility.
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  [END THE RECOUNT ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  The medical publication "STAT" explains that this declaration isn't just for show. It gives the government additional powers, which could allow the administration to access more federal money.
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  Critics say the U.S. health system hasn't moved fast enough on testing and vaccination for monkeypox. About 1.6 million people in America are considered high risk, but the U.S. only has enough supply to vaccinate about a third of those people.
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  Some of the strongest critics of the U.S. response are in the LGBTQ+ community. NBC News spoke to long-time AIDS activists who say this moment reminds them of public-health failures in the early days of AIDS.
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  There's a particular critique about messaging. Getting it right raises complicated issues. Some AIDS activists don't like the fact that public-health officials are basically saying "anyone can get monkeypox." That's technically correct, but the current reality is this outbreak is largely spreading among men who have sex with men. Some in the LGBTQ+ community want more targeted messages and help for those most at risk.
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  Public health officials have to walk a tricky line of sending a message without stigmatizing a whole community, all while fighting an outbreak where test kits and vaccines are hard to come by. The emergency declaration may be new, but for a lot of people on the front lines, monkeypox has been urgent for some time.
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  Getting an organ transplant is a difficult and emotional process. Right now, more than 100,000 people in this country are on the waiting list. About 22 people die every day waiting for a transplant. That's why the latest reporting from "The Washington Post" about major problems in the transplant system is so important. Todd Frankel is one of the reporters on the story…
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  Todd Frankel: There were problems with testing, there were problems with accessing the right organs, there were problems with lost organs, either lost in the plane, or sometimes they're thrown out in the operating room accidentally. So there was just a legion of problems.
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  A Senate investigation cited data from 2008 to 2015 showing that 70 people died because of mistakes in screening and matching donated organs. It's an unbelievable waste of a very scarce resource.
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  Frankel: The organs are in need, right? We have a shortage of enough livers, and kidneys, and hearts for the people who need them.
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  The "Post" points out most transplants go successfully. Deaths and illnesses are rare. But given how vital these procedures are, and how rare the organs themselves are, advocates say there are too many errors happening.
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  Doctors who do these transplants say the system is badly broken. A non-profit agency called the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, has run the transplant network for decades. It's under fire for outdated technology that slows down the process and makes mistakes.
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  Frankel: So, if you have the wrong blood type, your body is very likely going to reject the organ. And we had examples of, unfortunately, one lung transplant person who died when his body rejected the lungs. You know, hearts that had to be removed, kidneys, livers, pancreases, all of the organs that basically were affected by these sort of errors, and they're unusable at this point.
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  There was a case where two healthy kidneys were accidentally thrown in the trash. In another case, an airline lost a kidney in transit. The investigation also uncovered several cases where transplanted organs had to be removed. Frankel told us one patient received devastating news after surgery.
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  Frankel: Nine weeks later they were told "Oh, by the way, your donor had a very aggressive form of brain cancer, and it's very possible that you will develop brain cancer as a result." Which as you can imagine, as someone who's just survived an organ transplant surgery, this is incredibly bad and unfortunate news.
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  Data show that about one in five donated kidneys in America never gets transplanted. That's about double the rate of some European countries. It's a lot of organs going to waste. UNOS says it disagrees with assessments that say its technology is out of date and says it's working to improve tracking, but Frankel says Congress is fed up.
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  Frankel: Senators held a hearing this week to grill the UNOS executives and to sort of get to the bottom of what was going on, and they're quite upset. Both Republicans and Democrats were quite angry with UNOS about how they were operating things. Senator Elizabeth Warren, you know, said flatly they should lose this contract.
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  When you sit down to watch a romantic comedy, you pretty much know what you're signing up for.
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  Alissa Wilkinson: They're predictable on purpose. They kind of fit a formula that's been around for hundreds of years where, you know, there's a meet-cute and then there's some kind of a conflict, and then eventually the couple gets together.
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  That's Alissa Wilkinson, Senior Culture Reporter at "Vox." She says many of the movies out this summer are changing that formula. They're not just about couples. Some deal with the love between family and friends.
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  Wilkinson: I think we're seeing movies that address loneliness through stories about love and connection, so there's stories about people who find a romantic partner, or a life partner, or a chosen family, or friends they never thought they'd have, in the midst of their loneliness.
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  Wilkinson recommends the movie "A Love Song," about someone mourning her late husband and thinking about rekindling an old flame. Then there's "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande." It stars Emma Thompson as a widow who decides to hire a young, male sex worker on impulse. It's a touching comedy that takes both characters to some pretty surprising places.
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  Wilkinson also recommends a documentary called "We Met in Virtual Reality." The whole movie was recorded in a V.R. platform. It includes interviews with people who felt disconnected from the world during the pandemic.
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  Wilkinson: And this film actually, I think, shows a lot of what the love stories of today are about, which is loneliness and connection. Which I think is really something that we all [LAUGHS] maybe, you know, after coming through the pandemic in a time of real profound loneliness for a lot of people, and that hasn't really ended for a lot of people.
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  Wilkinson says many of the movies she's writing about here are funny. They're definitely not romantic comedies in the old sense. They're much broader in how they define love. And she's hoping more filmmakers will go beyond the formula and keep exploring all kinds of love on the big screen.
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  If you can't think about going to the movies without your movie theater candy, this next story, or should I say, job opportunity, is for you.
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  "FORTUNE" reports on a company that's hiring a Chief Candy Officer. It pays around $78,000 dollars a year. The job is to taste-test more than 3,500 pieces of candy a month, so that's around 113 pieces of candy a day.
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  Yes, it's kind of a P.R. stunt, but it's a fun one. Applicants can be as young as five years old. The company promises "extensive palate training" and an "extensive dental plan."
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
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  And check out our weekend interview show, "In Conversation." This week, I talk to Jim DeRogatis, the journalist who broke the R. Kelly story back in 2000. Kelly's been sentenced to 30 years for sex trafficking, and he's got another federal trial scheduled this month. Jim told me why he thinks it took so long for Kelly to be brought down.
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  Jim DeRogatis: Well, this is a man who generated, over the course of his career, a billion dollars for Jive Records and a half billion for himself. And as long as the gravy train was rolling, no one was gonna derail that gravy train.
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  Check out that weekend listen. I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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