Skip to main content

A WHITE WHALE

      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
Mar     2        1989     9490        1726       110      194
April   6         906     11787         4211       631       37
May    4         853     13667         3025     3786     59 
June   1         287    10637         2346      3205      95
 July   7          251      8440        1595        817       411
Aug    4          656    10120        1118         532      423 
Sept  22       2228     9326          839        279      124
        29         2190      8859         643        309      108
Oct    6         2102       8255         543        315       59
        19          2005      7528         401       160        80 
        27          1594      8671         433        734        62 
Nov   3          1436      7830         186        458        23
        24          1594      8270         176        396        22 
Dec    1          1633      8475         266        477        28
          8          1324      7894         231        159         36
        17          1653      7359         126        289         35 
        22          1634      7686         137        434         99
        23          1149       6942        100        374         75
        29          1777       7393         147        268         81
        30         1354       6758          154        220       126 
Jan    7         2025       6729          148        285       140
       14          2303       7872          238        430       128
       19          2374       8972          349        493       156
       20          2700      9225          324        703       139

Summary:  
  • More people dying.
  • However, a lot more people are being infected, so the hospitalization and mortality rates are dropping with Omicron.
  • Highest new cases (new cases/million population in parentheses):
    • World  3,669,810  (46.5)
    • USA  692,320  (2073)
      • California  104,707  (2650)
      • Hawaii  5,911  (4222)
    • France  425,183  (6491)
    • India  347,254  (267)
    • Israel  68,513  (7368)
    • Denmark  37,987  (6549)
    • Luxembourg  3,070  (4797)
    • Guadeloupe  20,806  (52015)
    • Japan  39,841  (316)
    • Taiwan  37  (1.5)
    • China  66  (0.045)
  • Guadeloupe is a French overseas department of six islands in the Caribbean with a population of around 400,000.  Founded by Columbus in 1493.  What is happening here today?  Can't find any further confirming information about why they had so many new cases yesterday.  But if it is true that they actually have 52,015 cases per million, that cannot be good news for the rest of the world that has escaped the Omicron variant.

About my topic of the day, a white baby humpback whale named Sugar, or perhaps Betty White, was seen earlier this week near Sugar Beach on Maui:


A white whale is a genetic mutation absent melanin, a pigment protein in your skin, hair and eyes to protect you from sunlight.  Mammologists have estimated that one in 10,000 births is a true albino.  However, radioactive contamination at Chernobyl changed the barn swallow rate from zero to 15% in 1991.  A white animal is more prone to predators.

There are 75,000 whales in the ocean today, so if the 1 in 10,000 rate of albino births holds true, there should be a lot more white whales.  So the odds of being born a white whale must be very much lower.

Australia has had several white humpbacks, beginning in 1991 with Migaloo, white fella in Aboriginal.

The last sighting of Migaloo was in 2014.  For a long while it was thought he (he is a he) was the only white whale in the ocean.  However, in 2008, Bahloo was seen near the Great Barrier Reef, with distinct black spots on head and tail.  Then in 2011, another white humpback whale calf was spotted in the same area and named MJ or Migaloo Jr.  

In 2013 a white humpback was discovered off the coast of Norway and named Willow.




A whale shark is a shark, not a whale.

There have been several white sperm whales.  Herman Melville based Moby on Mocha Dick, a real male albino white sperm whale, who died in 1838, finally succumbing to whalers after prevailing perhaps a hundred times.   Twenty harpoons were found on his body.  Mocha was 70 feet long and yielded 100 barrels of oil and some ambergris, said to be worth more than gold, made into perfumes.  He had mostly lived near Mocha Island off the central coast of Chile.  More recently, there have been sightings of white sperm whales off Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea in 2006 and 2015.

Hiroya Minakuchi uploaded this photo in 2012 of a white sperm whale off the Azores:

As I reach the end of my productive life, I feel blessed to have had the privilege of being able to search for an assortment of white whales, that is, something obsessively pursued with little chance of success.    Rather than frustration, the effort has been exhilarating.

Ironically, my final attempt is a different color, the Blue Revolution.  I've identified with those chasing white whales, like Don Quixote searching for his Impossible Dream.

About the Blue Revolution, looking at the following illustration, now I know where to put future floating cities.  Did you know that ocean storms don't form around South America, and west of Africa, south of the equator?

Where they do, is global warming beginning to make a difference?  The earliest tropical depression that has ever formed in the Pacific around and east of Hawaii occurred on 25April2020.  Only two of them formed near the U.S. from May 1-10 in the 1851-2015 period.  The traditional Pacific hurricane season starts on May 15.  From NOAA and the National Hurricane Center:


However, today the Weather Network headlined:  An incredibly rare tropical cyclone might develop near Hawaii this week.  There is a low-pressure system a little less than a 1000 miles east-northeast of Hawaii that has a 40% chance of becoming Agatha from tomorrow through early next week.

-

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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