BE AFRAID OF MONSTER IDA

Before I get into the very dangerous Hurricane Ida approaching New Orleans, a few other news items of the day:

The USA suffered yesterday with 190,370 new cases and 1304 new deaths.

#2 Mexico had 835 new deaths with "only" 20,633 new cases.
#2 India with 46,805 new cases had 514 new deaths.
Hawaii had our worst day ever, 1035 new cases and 9 new deaths.
Interestingly enough, Florida had the highest number of new cases with 27,584, but only 8 new deaths. Hmmm...

The U.S. has now passed 100,000 evacuations from Kabul Airport, which will come to halt on Tuesday. Lots of fears, but no particularly serious after-attacks.
The NCAA women's volleyball season began yesterday with Hawaii beating Fairfield, and will play Marquette tonight, with Texas A&M tomorrow. Two stars were first year freshmen.
The NCAA football season began today, with Hawaii at UCLA in the Rose Bowl on ESPN.

So on to Hurricane Ida, at this writing only a Category 1. However, all projections show her strengthening to a Category 4 and slamming into Louisiana near Grand Isle. The Gulf of Mexico water temperature is in the upper 80's, 8 F hotter than it should be in August.

Ominously, Ida is expected to make landfall on August 29 (Sunday), the same day Hurricane Katrina landed in 2005. Katrina did attain Category 5 status, but hit Louisiana/Mississippi as a Category 3.

The huge worry about Ida is that her eye is expected to pass New Orleans on the west side. Katrina zoomed by New Orleans to the east. The northwest quadrant of a northern hemisphere cyclonic storm is the danger spot. Katrina thus actually missed New Orleans, whereas the northwest quadrant of Ida will slam into that underwater city.

Of all the things, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said she can't order any mandatory evacuation for the entire city because it is now too late to do this. Thus, the populace will need to hunker down awaiting all kinds of dike and lake problems. Worse, the entire state has been suffering most, per capita, than any other state from new Delta variant cases.

Katrina killed 1836 and caused $125 billion in damages, the costliest on record. The Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center became home to too many for too long. Almost three years after Katrina struck, I happened to go to the Sugar Bowl game featuring Hawaii and Georgia. The devastation was still frightening.

I particularly remember a similar situation way back in July of 1969 when I drove from Baton Rouge, through New Orleans and Biloxi, and into Florida to see Apollo 11 ready to take Neil Armstrong to the Moon. Had lunch in Biloxi. Category 5 Hurricane Camille made landfall on August 17 at Bay St. Louis (38 miles west of Biloxi--remember that northwest quadrant danger--Ida is expected to pass no more than 100 miles west of New Orleans, and probably much closer), Mississippi at 175 MPH with a storm surge of 24 feet. Camille wiped out the highway where we had lunch. In 1971 I drove close by on Interstate 10 and noticed that whole area in Biloxi just was gone.

My recollection is that I have never been in a hurricane. I lived in Baton Rouge for three and a half years, and never experienced one. I was in Colorado when Hurricane Iniki struck Kauai. I happened to be at a conference in New Orleans in 1989 when Hurricane Jerry was in the Gulf of Mexico, so I left early on a rather memorable trip to Tokyo (yes, Tokyo), then back to San Francisco, and on to DC. The night I left Frisco I turned on my hotel TV set in DC and saw a scene that was unforgettable. The AMFAC hotel I had slept in the night before at the San Francisco Airport was destroyed, with the elevator shaft caved-in. My room was next to the elevator. This was that 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake that postponed a World Series game. I did eventually get home safely.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

Search This Blog