WILL THOSE INCOMING COMET AND ASTEROID THREATEN LIFE ON PLANET EARTH?

 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   1        1480    10470          703           505           235

        22       2228      9326          839           279           124

        29        2190      8859         643           309           108

Oct    5        1811       7495          686           285          103

          6        2102       8255         543           315            59

        12        1819       7544         201           249             37 

        19        2005      7528         401           160             80 

        27       1594       8671         433           734              62 

Nov   3        1436       7830        186           458             23

        10        1493      8366         264           362             48

        17        1416       8440        374           470              11

Dec    1        1633      8475         266           477             28 

          8        1324       7894         231           159             36

        15         1690      8233         227           343            54

        16           997      7115         173            391            36

        17         1653      7359         126            289           35 

        22         1634      7686         137            434           99 

        29         1777      7393         147            268           81

        30         1354      6758         154            220         126

Jan    5          1802     7551          133            325          110  

Summary:

• Well, the Omicron variant is certainly causing havoc, increasing new deaths in the USA.
• However, the jump to 1802 new deaths remains considerably below a year ago, when it was 4142, continuing into February with 4005 on 3February2021.
• #2 in new deaths was Russia with 828 and #3 Poland 631.
• There are two Omicron epicenters:  U.S. and Europe.
• Vietnam had 17,017 new cases and 19 new deaths.
• South Korea had 4,443 new cases and 57 new deaths.
• China had 91 new cases and no new deaths.
• Japan only had 1 new death yesterday, and Indonesia, with double the population of Japan, had 4 new deaths.
• The number of new cases in the U.S. was a fearsome 704,661, an increase from the day before when it was 595,810.
• That number of new cases about equals the sum of the next three countries (new cases/million):
• #1  U.S.  704,661 (2110)
• #2  France  332,252 (5072)
• #3  UK  194,747 (2847)
• #4  Italy  189,109 (3136)
• States new cases (new cases/million):
• New York  80,897 (4149)
• Florida  59,487 (2767)
• California  55,323 (1298)
• Alaska  886 (1213) new cases with no new deaths
• Hawaii  2611 (1865) new cases with no new deaths
• Vermont  805 (1290) new cases with 2 new deaths

It was a year ago today that the U.S. Congress was invaded.  Some thoughts:

• The only previous attack on the Capitol was in 1814 when British troops set fire to it. 
• Blame intelligence or whatever, but how can you plan for something like this when the last time was more than two centuries ago, and close by was the enemy.

• 
  727 have been charged. Remember, 7 people died, including three police officers. The judicial system decided to first convict misdemeanors.  Thus, the sentences were relatively light.
• The next phase will be for felonies, and the sentences will go up.

• 
  The final group will be leaders who organized the riot (and according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, even those who were pre-meditating before that event), and could include active Congressional members up to former president Donald Trump.

• 
  Clearly, the Democrats want to use this event to increase their Congressional numbers on November 8, 2022.  They want Trump to continue to lie, for just that simple act of immorality will ruin the Republican party if they continue to hold back in accordance.

• 
  The House committee leading the investigation has a plan to prosecute leaders of the attack.
• Republican development for the coup actually began before the 2021 presidential election.

• 
  It started with Trump warning that there would be election fraud. 
• Ironically, if there was any hanky-panky, the Republicans were the ones trying to limit voting and such, including Postmaster General DeJoy, who will finally soon be replaced.

• 
  If Trump lost, the strategy was to gain the support of Republican-controlled state legislatures to somehow reverse the vote count.  The federal courts stopped this.
• Failing that, they wanted Vice President Pence to on January 6 declare the electoral count void, leading to the House voting on who would be president.

• 
  The voting would be by states, so Trump would be the victor.
• The riot itself, if anything, scared Pence to instead do the right thing, something he might have done anyway.  But if this insurrection did not occur, who knows what would have happened.

• 
  Donald Trump got close to remaining as president....but not really, for what killed the coup was the 3January2021 letter released by all ten living former defense secretaries, including the by-then-resigned Mark Esper, declaring the election was over and Biden had prevailed.

• 
  Also, Trump needed the support of the military, but that public letter and the patriotism of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and his commanders, scuttled the effort.
• I would not be surprised if some congressional members and Donald Trump himself get indicted by the summer.

Did you see Don't Look Up, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence and Jonah Hill?  It's showing for free on Netflix.  Has to do with a comet that destroys Planet Earth.  Yup, I gave away the ending.  Rotten Tomatoes did not particularly like it, bestowing 55/77 scores.

Anyway, let's get real.  According to Space.com, megacomet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (MCBB) is the find of the decade.  

• This comet is the largest icy body ever identified and perhaps more than 100 miles in diameter.  

• 
  That popular Hale-Bopp comet of 1997 was 37 miles across and was visible to the naked eye for 18 months, twice as long as the Great Comet of 1811.  Came as close as 1.315 AU, or 120 million miles.
• Halley's Comet (right), incidentally, which came in 1986, and will return in 2061, is only 6.8 miles in diameter.
• 
  MCBB has already sprouted a tail even though it is so far away from our sun.
• This comet will pass by our Earth in ten years, but, as of now only as close as the orbit of Uranus and Saturn, which is about a billion miles away.

While we ponder about that incoming megacomet, did you know that asteroid 7482, with a diameter of almost a mile, will on January 18 be shooting past us at a speed of 43,000 miles per hour only 1.24 million miles away?  That would be around five times the distance of the moon from us.  That Don't Look Up asteroid was a little more than 5 miles in diameter and was a large piece of rock.

But back to that arriving comet, The Daily Beast said:  The Most Monstrous Comet Ever Known is Headed Straight for Us.  It is 20 times larger than the asteroid from that film.  Further, the speed and conformation of a comet causes nine times more damage than an asteroid.  To calm you down, though, there are so many more asteroids out there that the likelihood of a major impact from an asteroid is 100 times greater than from a comet.  Plus the article grossly exaggerated the truth about the headed straight for us statement.

Sent to me today:

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