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On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: Chiefs win second Super Bowl in four years
The Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champions while Rihanna steals the show. Plus, USA TODAY Host Ralphie Aversa looks at this year’s commercials, USA TODAY Health Reporter Adrianna Rodriguez talks about how serious bird flu might be, residents return home after evacuation orders following a train derailment and the release of toxic chemicals in Ohio, and the U.S. shoots down an unidentified flying object over Michigan.
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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 Monday, the 13th of February 2023. Today, the Chiefs are Super Bowl Champs. Plus a look at this year’s big commercials and how serious is this year’s strain of bird flu?
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The Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champions. The Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles last night 38-35, thanks to a second half comeback after trailing 24-14 at halftime. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes won his second Super Bowl MVP at the age of 27 despite aggravating his high ankle sprain injury late in the first half. The game was not without controversy though. A late defensive holding call help the Chiefs’ offense stay alive in the fourth quarter. Still the win cements the Chiefs as the team to beat in the NFL. The Chiefs went a half century without championships and now have two in the last four years. So are they a dynasty? USA TODAY Sports Reporter Nate Davis asks that question on USATODAY.com. Meanwhile, Rihanna stole some of the night’s spotlight with her halftime show full of 2000s hits and she revealed during the performance that she’s pregnant again. Read USA TODAY Music Writer Melissa Ruggieri’s full review with a link in today’s show notes.
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As always, many Americans tuned in to last night’s big game, mostly for the commercials. USA TODAY’S annual ad meter gave the public a chance to vote on some of their favorites and results are still rolling in this morning. I spoke with USA TODAY host and producer Ralphie Aversa about some of this year’s big hits.
Ralphie, thanks for coming on the show.
Ralphie Aversa:
My pleasure.
Taylor Wilson:
So what are some of the big trends we saw this year in Super Bowl commercials?
Ralphie Aversa:
Well, definitely stars, plural. You look at Uber with Diddy and the whole cavalcade of artists who have had big hits trying to recreate an Uber one jingle. Pretty funny. Of course you had T-Mobile starring John Travolta, but other actors in there as well. if you’re a fan of “Scrubs,” you know all about that. PopCorners, “Breaking Bad,” Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. So it wasn’t just like one big star in an ad, it was multiple stars.
Taylor Wilson:
Ralphie, these ad campaigns now star well before the game itself, sometimes weeks in advance. How effective is that actually for the brands?
Ralphie Aversa:
Well, it’s mixed results if we’re talking effectiveness for USA TODAY’s ad meter. Now, all of these campaigns have different objectives. Some are trying to raise brand awareness, others are trying to actually sell you a product. And so depending on the brand’s objective, I think that’s where then you could really judge how effective or not these are. But yeah, as you mentioned, these campaigns start weeks before the Super Bowl and in some instances they continue after the game.
Taylor Wilson:
Let’s talk money. What were the costs this year for Super Bowl spots?
Ralphie Aversa:
Okay, so it was reported that a 30 second spot cost about $7 million. That is a new record. It continues to go up every year. A couple of reasons around that. The biggest being, look, football is America’s passion. It’s America’s addiction. And with these huge TV rights at these networks signed, the game of course this year was on Fox, they’ve got to pay for that somehow, right? So that’s part of it. But then on top of that 7 million for a 30 second spot, look at again, Uber for example, or any of these ads that involve celebrities because you got to pay that celebrity. These celebrities are getting most of the time a seven-figure deal, in some cases, an eight-figure deal. You also then look at PopCorners with “Breaking Bad.” You have to license, “Breaking Bad” and all that stuff, and they involve the director of “Breaking Bad” as well in that ad. So it can get very, very costly.
Taylor Wilson:
Just finishing here, where can listeners find out who the ad meter winner is this morning?
Ralphie Aversa:
Okay, so if you’re checking out 5 Things first thing in the morning, we may not have the ad meter results yet, but they are coming later this morning. You’ll be able to find them at admeter.usatoday.com. You can also still vote through the end of the week, a number of superlatives up for grabs. Again, sign up to be a panelist, admeter.usatoday.com.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Ralphie Aversa, great info. Thanks so much.
Ralphie Aversa:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Residents have returned home to parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania after an evacuation following a train derailment and toxic chemical release. The derailment happened on February 3rd before officials released toxic chemicals from the train’s tankers on February 6th. That released hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air. Testing last week showed the air returned to normal, but at least one lawsuit has been filed related to the chemical release.
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We’re currently seeing one of the largest bird flu outbreaks in recorded history, and the virus has begun to spill over to mammals. So how concerned should people be? USA TODAY Health Reporter Adrianna Rodriguez has more.
Adrianna, welcome to the show.
Adrianna Rodriguez:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Let’s start with the basics. What is the bird flu?
Adrianna Rodriguez:
So bird flu is actually not that new to us. We’ve had bird flu since the late 1990s, but this particular virus, H5N1, this particular strain has been particularly transmissible among birds including domestic birds and wildlife birds like eagles and hawks and vultures and stuff that we don’t usually have domesticated like we do chickens. The strains that we’re looking at right now is H5N1, 2, 3 4, and 4B viruses. Those seem to be the ones that are spreading round in Africa and Asia and Europe and North and South America, so everywhere.
Taylor Wilson:
So Adrianna, you mentioned that other animals other than birds are now getting this strain of bird flu, including some mammals. What have we seen from other species and how worried should humans be about this?
Adrianna Rodriguez:
Well, humans are mammals, right? So when we talk about mammals, that does bring up some concern. The sort of mammals that we’ve been seeing have been like raccoons, grizzly bears, have been foxes. Basically these animals are sort of individual cases, but what they suspect is that this animal had eaten a bird or a dead bird or something like that that was infected with the disease and then had contracted the disease that way. There’s been a couple of cases where that has been put into question because we’ve seen a large cluster of cases within an outbreak. So the first case where we saw that was back in the summer of 2022 in New England. We saw a cluster of seals die off because of this virus. And so while we can say maybe all of them ate infected birds because of the close proximity and because of how many were infected and died, there is a chance and a suggestion that maybe this was sort of mammal to mammal transmission instead of just the usual animal eats infected bird, animal then gets infected.
Another case where we saw this was also sort of in the fall with the mink farm in Spain. What happened was is that a couple got sick, then there became a lot got sick and had hotspots and stuff like that. And so this mink farm, they did eat poultry byproducts, but as we have said, the fact that so many had gotten sick and they were sick sort of in their hotspots – which suggests animal to animal transmission again – that’s another cause of concern that public health experts are like, “Okay, it’s not just maybe bird to animal and then animal gets sick and dies. Now there might be some transmission between mammals to mammals.”
Taylor Wilson:
And have any human cases popped up with this strain yet?
Adrianna Rodriguez:
There have been some human cases. Since 2020, I believe there has been six total cases. They’ve popped up in China, the UK, Vietnam, the US had a case as well, but all of those cases have been suspected to just be like workers who have close contact with the infected bird. So it doesn’t seem like there was sort of a human to human or even a mammal to human transmission.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So six people since 2020, that’s not a ton of people, not a ton of cases. If things do get out of control and we see a widespread outbreak, is the US ready for a bird flu pandemic?
Adrianna Rodriguez:
Public health experts have been sounding the alarm for pandemics since even before bird flu, since before COVID. All of the same pandemic measures apply. So we need a bunch of testing, we need a bunch of treatments, we need a bunch of vaccines. Right now with bird flu, we don’t really know too much about it to be super duper equipped with it. With influenza, we do have treatments, we have antivirals, but we are not sure how that will work against bird flu.
HHS says we do have some vaccines, but this is not meant to be totally distributed out to people. This is not sort of a stockpile as other media outlets had suggested. This is meant to be a stepping stone to be able to scale up and match with the gene sequence and see if this is viable for H5N1. And if it is, then you go on that path of sequencing and gene matching and scaling up. And so that could take maybe a six-month process. And that’s not just because we’re not ready, that’s just how medical science works. And so I feel like, are we ready? There’s so many questions and factors that go into it. It’s really hard to answer that question straight on. Not like we’re going in ground zero, we don’t know anything about influenza or flu, but at the same time there’s so much unknown about H5N1, especially these particular strains and the mutations involved with them that it’s hard to sufficiently prepare and say, “We have 300 million vaccines for this.”
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Adrianna Rodriguez covers health for USA TODAY. Thanks so much, Adrianna. I appreciate it.
Adrianna Rodriguez:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
The US has shot down an unidentified flying object over Michigan. It’s the fourth flying object the US has shot down this month beginning with the Chinese spy balloon. The Federal Aviation Administration and NORAD yesterday temporarily closed airspace over Lake Michigan. Fighter jets scrambled to investigate a radar finding but did not initially find an object. Officials indicated the object may have surveillance capabilities and maybe another spy balloon.
Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every day of the week right here wherever you’re listening right now. I’m back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.
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