WHY THIS SUDDEN UPSURGE OF INTEREST IN UFOs?

From Worldometer (new COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

DAY USA WORLD Brazil India South Africa

June 9 1093 4732 1185 246 82

July 22 1205 7128 1293 1120 572

Aug 12 1504 6556 1242 835 130

Sept 9 1208 6222 1136 1168 82

Oct 21 1225 6849 571 703 85

Nov 25 2304 12025 620 518 118

Dec 30 3880 14748 1224 299 465

Jan 14 4142 15512 1151 189 712

Feb 3 4005 14265 1209 107 398

25 2414 10578 1582 119 144

Mar 2 1989 9490 1726 110 194

31 1115 12301 3950 458 58

April 6 906 11787 4211 631 37

May 4 853 13667 3025 3786 59

26 607 12348 2399 3842 101

June 1 287 10637 2346 3205 95

30 249 8505 2127 991 383

July 7 251 8440 1595 817 411

28 483 10136 1366 641 520

Aug 3 516 10057 1238 561 555

4 656 10120 1118 532 423

10 657 10078 1183 468 189

Summary:

The U.S. had 101,254 new cases yesterday. #2 was Iran with 39,139, #3 India 36,316 and #4 Brazil 35,245.
Several other countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan are also looking bad.
China was reported in the news to be on the upswing, but they only had 143 new cases and no new deaths yesterday.
How will the USA do for the rest of the year? I have huge fears, for we have decided that remote learning is not ideal, most K-12 students are returning to school, and no one from ages 0-11 has yet been vaccinated. Of course there will be more and more COVID-19 cases, for the Delta variant is dangerously contagious, and younger children will return home and infect the rest of the family and friends. What kind of planning is this?

I only rarely write about flying saucers and other forms of unidentified flying objects (UFO). The reason is simple. I don't believe they are real. Reminds me of God and ghosts. All of them stretch the fabric of credibility. But many people do believe, and I want to better understand why. Who knows, they could ultimately be right.

To them, logic or reality takes a secondary role to faith and other psychological or cultural factors. The anti-vax protesters, for example, mostly have sincere personal reasons to avoid being vaccinated or having their children so inoculated. It could have something to do with freedom of choice or a wide array of other feelings. Misinformation feeds itself, and many spend time following or reading only about their beliefs, thus reinforcing an attitude. Same thing happens in politics and UFOs.

Almost three years ago I posted on ALIENS AND FLYING SAUCERS. In it I mentioned that I once worked for NASA on a SETI project, and experts in the field were reasonably accommodating about the potential of intelligent life out there in space, but kicked you out of their club if you showed any soft spot for flying saucers. UFOs were loosely okay, because that is just a term for what can't today be explained by science. Here is an excerpt:

You can find those articles if you wish to read the details, but I thought I'd at least summarize the editorial by Kendrick Frazier--Aliens and UFOs: What They Tell Us about Ourselves:

Topic is perennially fascinating.
But it's one of those subjects where hope, wishful thinking, and unfetterred speculation seems to overwhelm reason, facts and evidence.
Frazier did not say this, but to many, much of this might sound like religion.

Tomorrow I'll report on the unclassified nine-page report released in June to Congress by the Defense of Defense surveying 144 observations dating back to 2004. According to the New York Times: U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can't Rule It Out, Either. Huh?

It was this publication that catalyzed the recent flurry of media interest in UFOs. A previous government investigation called Project Blue Book, which ended in 1969, also stimulated public interest in the field in those days. I might also add that I'm currently viewing a relatively new six-part Netflix series entitled Top Secret UFO Projects Declassified, which Rotten Tomatoes lists, but has not bothered to rate. After a couple of episodes, my suspicions will be validated.

The Dow Jones Industrials will again break it's all time high today.

I'll end with a performance of John Williams and orchestra playing 50 years of Oscar songs.

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

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