TODAY IS 24 OCTOBER 2021

Can't complain much about today. Humanity and Planet Earth seem safe from any kind of world war or imminent disaster. Only 68 days left in 2021. Back in history, October 24 in 1929 was a Black Thursday, when the American stock market crashed. By 1932 the market had dropped by 73%. The equivalent would be the Dow Jones, currently at 35,677, falling to 9,833.

My fantasy baseball season is over, for I primarily had players from the Los Angeles Dodgers playing the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Instead, the Atlanta Braves will go to the Houston Astros for Game 1 on Tuesday. My fantasy regular teams did okay in 8-team leagues: first, two seconds and a third. Fantasy NFL not doing well. Not playing fantasy NBA. NCAA basketball begins on November 9. Remember, Saturday night of November 6 is when daylight savings time ends.

When I lived in DC, the Sunday Washington Post was an event. Now and then, I added the Sunday New York Times. Here is what the NYT said this morning:

The U.S. has suffered through five coronavirus pandemic waves. Experts are not predicting much of a next wave this winter. Here is the article you can read. Great graphics!
President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion 10-year spending bill with all the wishes of liberal Democrats for social welfare and the environment will be pared down to $1.9 trillion. Forget about free community college, free dental, free vision/hearing coverage and high penalties for environmental polluters. This is the one supposedly being snuck through using reconciliation, where only a Democratic majority is needed. While Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema has been a hindrance, it is Senator Joe Manchin who has been effective in whittling down this package.

There is still that other $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework that has passed the Senate. The House is holding back to insure that the larger wish list bill passes first. Both will get through sometime this month or next, but not at the original $4.7 trillion total level.

Around 80,000 Afghan refugees were evacuated. 23,000 or so are being housed at seven military bases in the U.S. The rest are being processed at 14 staging bases throughout the Middle East and Europe, with Kosovo handling the most.

Here are a few more items I can now delete from my desktop. I'll start with why there is a bite on the Apple logo. Has to do with byte and Adam&Eve.

Next, the future of Amazon. You think, maybe, workers will be eliminated? There are no unions in their U.S. facilities.

Did you know?

Some entertainment from Britain's Got Talent:

Click on this to learn who won the competition this year. They apparently allow more cleavage in the UK. Whoops, that was five years ago, for Simon looked a lot younger, and it was one hour and 42 minutes long. The winner in 2020 was a comedic pianist, John Courtenay, and here is his journey. Only 16 minutes. The pandemic cancelled this series in 2021. Will return next year.

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 suspicio...

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...

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 a...

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