Ari Shapiro

A second winter of COVID is descending upon the United States.

This time there is widespread access to vaccines, but there's also the new omicron variant, a much more infectious form of the coronavirus that's surging.

Health care workers in hospitals are seeing the worst of the pandemic every day. But is anything all that different with this latest variant? To find out, All Things Considered spoke with three nurses from around the country to talk about their experiences.

On the day we visit Jeneyah McDonald, she has five pallets' worth of bottled water in a corner of her kitchen.

"Oh, that's low," she says.

McDonald buys more every week for cooking, drinking and brushing teeth. She also has a filter on her tap. She checks the light to see it remains green.

"I try and keep a clear glass by the sink so I can fill it up to see with some paper behind it," she says. "I mean, who else is doing that?"

At 3 a.m. on Saturday, June 26, Theresa Bonham awoke to a phone call.

"My neighbor across the street called me and asked me if I had been in the basement," says Bonham, 52, who lives in the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood of Detroit. She assumed the neighbor had seen someone trying to break in.

"So I get up and I open the basement door, and I see a bucket float by. And I'm like, 'Oh my God'."

That night, six inches of rain fell in Detroit within three hours. The heaviest downpour hit the low-lying southeastern parts of the city where Bonham lives.

The United States and China — the world's top two greenhouse gas-emitting countries, which together account for about 40% of the world's annual carbon output — announced Wednesday they have agreed to cooperate on limiting emissions to address the global climate crisis.

At the COP26 U.N. climate summit, some of those with the most to lose insist they aren't victims, they're warriors.

"As a Pacific Islander, a lot of people think my role here at COP is to come and cry, like I owe them my trauma, when I don't owe you my trauma," said 23-year-old Brianna Fruean, a climate activist from Samoa.

Fruean opened the first day of the summit in Glasgow, Scotland, speaking directly to the heads of state from all over the world.

As young climate activists descended on Glasgow for the COP26 UN climate summit, Vanessa Nakate was faced with a familiar yet sad experience: Being pushed to the side.

"I think it's not just my experience. There are many activists from the global south who have been sidelined at the conference," she said.

Nakate is no stranger to the world stage or being erased from the record, having attended another summit last year in Davos, Switzerland.

In a crowded house above a pub in Scotland, Ruth Miller is busy planning her next move.

The 24-year-old Climate Justice Director for the Alaska-based grassroots group, Native Movement, is one of nine young people squeezed into the four-bedroom rental in between attending events at the COP26 UN climate summit.

But even having to stay an hour's drive outside of the main conference venue, they are among the activists who are insisting the politicians, dignitaries, and negotiators hear their stories, voices, and expertise.