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People who’ve never had COVID may hold the key to beating it · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, May 12th. 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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  Most Americans have been infected with the coronavirus at some point during the pandemic, according to the CDC. But many Americans have managed to avoid getting sick, even after being exposed.
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  Katie Shepherd: They may have other biological differences on the cellular level or in the makeup of their airways that make it more difficult for the virus to take root.
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  Katie Shepherd covers health and science for "The Washington Post." She told us about the plan that scientists have to study this group of people.
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  Shepherd: By identifying any commonalities between people who seem to be unable to catch the virus, scientists hope that they could find targets for new drugs or better vaccines and other treatments that can either prevent people from catching the virus at all, or make their symptoms and duration of infection, if they do get the virus, much shorter and less dangerous.
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  So far, there are 700 participants enrolled in the study. Bevin Strickland is one of them. She's 49 years old and she volunteered at a hospital in New York City early in the pandemic, at a time when the city was the national epicenter of COVID. And even though she worked around a lot of patients who had COVID and, even at times, worked without a mask, she's still, to this day, never been infected.
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  Shepherd: She said she was feeling droplets on her face sometimes while she was at work, because of patients coughing near her. And somehow, throughout the duration of her six-week volunteer work at this hospital, she never once tested positive for coronavirus and she was tested every week.
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  The thing is, Strickland's parents have never gotten COVID either. And neither has her twin sister. All of this leads scientists to believe that there could be something about our genes. But people out there, like Strickland? That's believed to be really rare.
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  Shepherd: And part of that reason is because so many people across the globe, but even in the United States in particular, have already had COVID.
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  Shepherd told us, after this article ran in "The Washington Post" earlier this week, they got a ton of responses from readers who wanted to know how they could participate in the study. If you think you might have some kind of natural COVID immunity, and you want to learn more, we'll link to the study on the Apple News Twitter and Instagram feeds.
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  One of Russian President Vladimir Putin's biggest issues with the West is the expansion of NATO over the years, closer and closer to his territory. But we're now watching reaction to his war in Ukraine that's moving to make NATO even bigger, and extend it right up to Russia's borders.
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  "The Wall Street Journal" reports on today's news that Finland is taking steps to join NATO. This is a big deal, because it's a break from decades where Finland stayed out of the Western treaty. The country's leaders worried that joining would provoke neighboring Russia.
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  But the war in Ukraine changed public opinion in Finland. Polls show support for joining NATO went from around 20% before the invasion, to 76% this month.
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  Finnish and NATO officials say they're hoping to make the induction process quick. As long as Finland stays in this limbo, not quite in NATO but definitely seeking membership, it'll be vulnerable to attacks from Moscow, which has promised "consequences" if it were to join.
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  Think of the most complicated Rubik's Cube you can imagine. Trying to figure out how to get not just six colors to all line up, but dozens of colors with billions of dollars on the line. That's what it's like to put together the NFL schedule, which comes out tonight. You've got 32 teams playing over 18 weeks.
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  "L.A. Times" NFL columnist Sam Farmer talked to us about his exclusive look inside this very complicated process.
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  Sam Farmer: It uses, at any given time, 4,000 computers around the world to crunch trillions of potential schedules that adhere to 25,000 or so rules.
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  All of those rules prevent teams from having to travel too much, and they build breaks into a grueling season. You also have to work around big-name concerts that could get in the way. For example, the Bears can't play at Soldier Field on the same day that Jay-Z has the place booked for a concert. The masterminds of this schedule, and their army of computers, also have to balance a lot of conflicting interests. There are the teams themselves that want a schedule to give them their best shot at making it to the Super Bowl. There are the TV networks that have a lot of money on the line and they want to capture the largest audiences. And, for the first time this year, there are now streaming services involved. This season, Amazon Prime Video will become the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football.
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  Farmer: The schedule is essential to the League making money and satisfying its partners, because the schedule sets up those great matchups that are great in those primetime windows and drives TV money. And TV money is the lifeblood of the League. So, the networks want to have the best games to track the biggest audiences to charge the most for advertising.
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  Plus, there are the unforeseen variables that you just can't account for, like Tom Brady retiring and then un-retiring. The NFL told the "L.A. Times," that basically forced their schedulers to start all over again. And even with trillions of schedule possibilities, Farmer says, it's pretty much impossible to please everyone.
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  Farmer: And that's sort of a hallmark of the schedule-making process. Everyone is gonna be unhappy with their schedule and, [LAUGHS] for one reason or another, they're gonna feel that this is unfair. And the League's posture on this is, if everybody's a little bit unhappy, then that means that's probably a pretty fair schedule.
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  On an airplane, when there's a medical emergency, the pilot might ask, "Is there a doctor on board?" But what happens when the pilot has the medical emergency? That's exactly what happened on a small, single-engine Cessna flying over Florida this week. "CNN" has the air traffic control audio of the moment that this problem popped up. And it's a little hard to make out, so you might have to listen closely.
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  Passenger: I've got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent and I have no idea how to fly the airplane.
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  [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
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  [END SUN SENTINEL ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  That's a passenger, saying the pilot is out cold and he doesn't know how to fly an airplane. The controller asks, "What's your position?" And the answer? "No idea." But the guy in the control tower stayed calm. He's actually a certified flight instructor, so he pulled up a cockpit diagram of the Cessna, and he basically taught the passenger how to fly, or at least, how to land.
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  [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
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  Controller: Try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me.
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  The passenger landed safely at Palm Beach International Airport. The controller told "CNN," his adrenaline was pumping, and he was just so relieved that nobody got hurt. There's audio of air traffic control telling other pilots what had just happened on the tarmac.
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  [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
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  Unidentified Speaker: Man, they did a great job.
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  Unidentified Speaker 2: Passengers landed the airplane?
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  Unidentified Speaker: That's correct.
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  Unidentified Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Great job.
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  [END SUN SENTINEL ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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