JUST ANOTHER SPLENDID WEEK IN PARADISE

I yesterday expounded on social welfare. Let me add a final editorial, the matter of the child tax credit, which will be excised when Biden and Manchin next year agree on the Build Back Better Act that will end up being close to $1.8 trillion. I don't want to go into the details of that child tax credit, which you can read here. But is basically a transfer of money from the rich to the masses.

I think we need to adjust our charitable and social welfare programs to consider family well-being. With aid to parents should be some compelling motivational incentive. The whole matter of entitlements is at the foundation of what has to be re-thought out.

Finally, unmentioned is that this type of government aid only further exacerbates population growth, which will more and more strain the resource limits available in the world. Compound this factor with the contribution to poverty for families who can't afford children. In the U.S. there is no effort to limit population growth.

On December 4 the Omicron variant represented only 0.7% of new infections, which jumped to 12.6% on December 11, while Delta was at almost 87.4%. Over the past weekend Omicron jumped to 73.2% and Delta dropped to 26.6%. I guess there must be a third variant at around 0.2%. I further checked, and there are limited cases of alpha, beta and mu variants still infecting people. There was also the first Omicron death, to a Texas man in his 50's who was not vaccinated.

My splendid week began with a TEDx talk on the Blue Revolution beamed throughout the world as the first of eight lectures Blue Revolution Hawaii hosted, where we were linked in advance to the Glasgow climate change summit. Watch my presentation. Should you have any special connection to an imaginative billionaire, send him this concept, which might well be the only geoengineering solution for atmospheric warming, where those participating can actually make a financial profit.

Had several great dinners in my 15 Craigside apartment. The first set compared two types of American beef, one wagyu, accompanied by chu-toro sashimi:

The wine was a Stanford Governor's Selection Martelloto Red Blend. Plus hot sake and cold Sapporo Beer, with hot green tea. The wagyu at $30/pound was better than the $24/pound tenderloin. However this American wagyu was nowhere close to the typically $100/pound wagyu from Japan, although I've seen it in stores such as Mitsukoshi in Japan at more than $250/pound.

Then pork tonkatsu fried in butter with ahi and hamachi sashimi.

Next, artichoke with roast duck/pork and salad, with a Prosecco and Johnny Walker Blue:

Golfing at the Ewa Villages Golf Course:

A double rainbow at the Ted Makalena Golf Course:

John and two cats on the 16th hole:

One sunset the horizon looked clear, so I tried to take a photo of a green flash:

Remarkably, I succeeded!!!

The post-sunset with Venus at the top left:

Yes, just another splendid week in Paradise.

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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