People rush for safety as Hawaii wildfires burn, rising COVID-19 rates: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: People rush for safety as Hawaii wildfires burn

Dozens are dead and major landmarks have been lost amid wildfires on Maui and elsewhere. Plus, the FBI shoots and kills a man during an arrest for threats against President Joe Biden, USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub looks at rising COVID-19 rates, and whether we should be worried, Donald Trump's Twitter account info turned over to Special Counsel as part of search warrant, and USA TODAY Education Reporter Alia Wong looks at how some states consider address sharing for school placement a crime.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 10th of August 2023. Today, the latest from Hawaii as wildfires kill dozens of people. Plus, the FBI kills a man during an arrest for threats against the president, and rates of COVID are going up, but health experts aren't as worried this time around.

♦

At least 36 people are dead amid devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The fires forced hundreds of evacuations yesterday, overwhelmed hospitals and even sent some residents fleeing into the ocean to escape the flames. And dozens more have been injured in addition to those killed. Meanwhile, entire blocks of homes and businesses went up in smoke in the historic town of Lahaina where fires were fueled by a passing hurricane. In addition, three fires were burning on the big island. Acting Governor Sylvia Luke said that residents were preparing for Hurricane Dora with no reason to expect the widespread fires.

Governor Sylvia Luke:

We never anticipated in this state that a hurricane which did not make impact on our islands, will cause this type of wildfires. Governor Green is cutting his trip short. He is cutting his trip by a week, and that tells you the magnitude of how grave we think the situation is.

Taylor Wilson:

Earlier this week, more than 4,000 people evacuated to emergency shelters set up by the American Red Cross and thousands more sheltered at Maui's main airport trying to leave the island. It's still difficult to fully assess the damage, but state Senator Gilbert Keith-Agaran, said that a number of landmarks have been lost, including historic buildings and businesses and temples and cemeteries where royal figures were buried.

♦

The FBI shot and killed a man in Utah while agents were trying to arrest him at his home for making threatening statements against President Joe Biden. The incident came a day before Biden's visit to the state. The man, 75-year old Provo resident, Craig Robertson, was charged with three felony counts before the shooting happened early yesterday morning. The FBI is reviewing the incident and did not give further details on how the shooting unfolded. Robertson is also accused of making threats against Vice President Kamala Harris and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, among others. Bragg is pursuing federal charges against former President Donald Trump.

♦

Rates of COVID-19 are ticking up around the country, but rates are still nowhere near where they once were. I spoke with USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub for why this year might be different. Hey there, Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Hi.

Taylor Wilson:

So COVID rates are rising again. What exactly do the numbers say here?

Karen Weintraub:

So they're, but they're climbing from a much lower rate and they're not as high as we have seen in the past. So it's cause for some concern, but not worry or panic.

Taylor Wilson:

And why is COVID data nowadays trickier to decipher than in previous years?

Karen Weintraub:

It's very hard to follow because nobody's getting a PCR test these days, I guess maybe unless you're hospitalized. But we're getting a lot of home tests, so it's very hard to track those infections now. So CDC has completely stopped tracking infections. They do still track hospitalizations and those increased 12%, but they're two weeks out of date. So they increased 12% as of the week leading up to July 22nd. We don't have any more recent data than that. The good thing is that the death rate has not increased nearly as much. We've seen what researchers call it, a decoupling of the death rate in the hospitalization rate. So even though more people are hospitalized, the death rate is not climbing as much. And that's testament to a couple of things. One is that because of vaccines and previous infections and antivirals and treatments, people are not getting quite as sick even when they are getting infected. And we're just getting better at treating people when they are sick.

Taylor Wilson:

And experts say this surge is not necessarily tied to a new variant. What does that mean for this uptick in cases compared with years past?

Karen Weintraub:

Right. They don't think it's going to be as bad as we saw, certainly with Delta and Omicron where we had this crazy new variant that nobody had seen before that was really wildly more infectious than previous variants, when previous infections did not provide any protection. So if you've had COVID in the last certainly five, six months, you've probably have some protection against what's circulating now or been vaccinated with the bivalent vaccine. We're much less vulnerable now than we were.

Taylor Wilson:

And what's the expectation for this coming fall and winter with COVID?

Karen Weintraub:

So nobody can really predict, but the hope, the optimistic projection is that it's not going to be as bad. It will likely increase because respiratory infections do tend to increase in the fall, both because of the virus itself we think is likely to be more contagious in the fall. And also because most of us end up indoors more often when the temperature drops. And we also travel more, people go visit family at Christmas, and so we transmit more. And also there are things like flu and RSV and other respiratory viruses that are transmitting a lot in the wintertime. So there's concern about overlap with these infections. Healthcare workers in particular being out sick at the same time. There is concern, but not to the same degree that there has been in recent years.

Taylor Wilson:

So Karen, you touched on this a bit, but what's the latest vaccine guidance from health experts and what else can people be doing to try and stop themselves and others from getting sick?

Karen Weintraub:

Right. So anybody who's immunocompromised, severely immunocompromised, somebody who's had an organ transplant or is in treatment for cancer or taking drugs like rheumatoid arthritis treatment that reduces their immune system, those folks should be getting pretty regular vaccines at least twice a year, maybe even more. And people who are older, over 65, is when the risk really starts to increase. Those people also should be getting probably twice a year vaccines. Younger, healthier people, particularly if they've been infected relatively recently, probably don't need a fall vaccine unless they're really nervous. Or I was talking to somebody who's a professor and he said he'd probably get a shot before the fall because he doesn't want to miss out on classes. Somebody who might be a healthcare worker, someone who has a reason, you're getting married, you really don't want to miss those couple of weeks, couple of months, you might want to get a vaccine. But in general, the benefit is probably going to be pretty small to somebody who is young, otherwise healthy and already has some protection.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub, thanks as always.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant for former president Donald Trump's long dormant Twitter account in January. That's according to a court document unsealed yesterday. Twitter turned over Trump's information in February, three days late, and a federal judge fined the company $350,000 for missing the deadline. The revelation of the Trump search warrant is outlined in a decision last month from a federal court of appeals that upheld the judge's decision to hold Twitter in contempt. And the newly unsealed ruling deals more with Twitter's response to the search warrant than Smith's case against Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

On his Truth Social account, Trump protested that the Justice Department secretly attacked his Twitter account. Grand jury investigations are secret by law so that suspects don't know what prosecutors are looking at. Jack Smith sought information about Trump's Twitter activity before and during the insurrection of January 6th, 2021. Twitter, then led by CEO Jack Dorsey, suspended Trump's account shortly after the attack. His account was later reinstated after business mogul Elon Musk purchased the company.

♦

Address sharing. It's common for families to use the address of a friend or relative to enroll their kids in a district outside their geographic boundary. But nearly half of states consider it a crime. I spoke with USA TODAY Education Reporter Alia Wong to learn more. Hi Alia.

Alia Wong:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

Alia, why do some families engage in address sharing?

Alia Wong:

Because of the way school funding works in this country, the funding of a school is often very closely correlated with the wealth of a community because it is so reliant, not entirely reliant, but so reliant on property taxes. And so not everyone can necessarily afford to live in the communities that have the best school districts. So what they'll do is just use the address of a friend who lives there or a relative who lives there, and that will allow them to access these higher quality schools when the alternative would often be a school that isn't as well funded and doesn't have as high a caliber.

But there can be other reasons that parents address share. Maybe they live in one district but work in another district and it just makes a lot more sense to send your kid to school near your place of employment. Sometimes your kid just doesn't feel like they fit in to a school community and feels more comfortable in another school environment and that school might be outside of the district. Maybe it's just there's special programming at a school that is elsewhere or that isn't your geographically assigned school. So there are a lot of reasons that will compel a parent or a caregiver to address share. And for that reason, it is extremely common. I think everyone has either done this themselves or knows someone who has. It's also extremely diverse in the kinds of communities that it happens in. And it's not just happening among low income families or among families of a certain race or in a certain type of community like a rural one. It's just happening across the board.

Taylor Wilson:

Where is address sharing a crime and what punishments can people face?

Alia Wong:

So address sharing is a crime in at least 24 states. And this is according to a recent report that USA TODAY was able to get exclusive access to. And this report analyzed laws in every state. And while it's not necessarily common for states to have explicit laws on the book making address sharing a crime that can be prosecuted as such. But many do have general laws on the books that have been used to prosecute this practice criminally or to threaten criminal prosecution.

Taylor Wilson:

Some might see this as a victimless crime. Who does address sharing hurt if anyone?

Alia Wong:

Well, some would argue that address sharing hurts the taxpayers who live in the community where this kid is going to school. There's this sense that because schools are partly funded by property taxes, that the residents of the given community essentially own that school. But I think there's a lot to be challenged with that premise because public education is supposed to be a public good. Who gets to say where a child is allowed to and not allowed to go to school. And there are other funding sources for education, state funding and federal funding sources, so property taxes are not the exclusive source of funding. And I would say the people who are hurt most by this practice are the parents who ultimately get punished for it. And that's why a lot of the advocates out there, including the authors of the report I highlighted in my article, would say that the best way forward is to actively decriminalize this practice of address sharing. And thus far, Connecticut is the only state with a law on the books that explicitly decriminalizes this practice.

Taylor Wilson:

Alia Wong covers education for USA TODAY. Thanks as always, Alia.

Alia Wong:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at [email protected]. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.