UNEXPECTED HERO: VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY

China started it all, but their totalitarian form of government squelched any potential epidemics. Yesterday, for example, they had 1938 new cases, or 1.3 new cases/million population. Yet, they just closed down Shenzhen, a city of 17.5 million. Why? A very small uptick in cases. Much of Shanghai is also quarantined.

However, they are teaching Hong Kong a lesson, for that territory yesterday had 32,340 cases, a rate of 4267 new cases/million.
In comparison, the USA only had 5143 new cases, or 15 new cases/million
South Korea led the world with 350,176 new cases, or 6826 new cases/million.

On Saturday I posted on WHO REALLY IS VLADIMIR PUTIN? Today I feature the polar opposite world luminary, 44-year old Volodymyr Zelensky:

Born to Jewish parents, father a professor and mother an engineer, in Ukraine.
His grandfather's father and three brothers died in the Holocaust.
Earned a law degree from the Kyiv National Economic University.

Met Olena in college, dated for eight years and got married in 2003.

Went into comedy, with a successful TV series, Servant of the People, from 2015 to 2019, playing the role of the Ukrainian president.
Ran for the real presidency in 2019 as the anti-establishment and anti-corruption candidate, getting 73% of the votes.

Only a month later, President Donald Trump tried to corrupt Zelensky with that famous phone call of 25July2019.
Trump used Twitter. Zelensky is into Instagram.

According to the New York Times this morning:

Zelensky seems to fit the mold of Abraham Lincoln, who was one our country's least-qualified president, and Winston Churchill, who in 1939 looked like a washed-up politician.
CNN indicates that Zelensky is more Vaclav Havel than Churchill. Havel was an absurdist playwright whose movement in Czechoslovakia, the Velvet Rvolution, was named for a Western rock band. But Zelensky has an edge, for an entertainer is able to communicate with people in time of crisis.
Servant of the People was a cross between The West Wing and Monty Python.

Borrowed from Benny Hill (right), a crude British comedian. How crude? Watch this.
Thrived in the role of the average guy who wins over beautiful women.
Ran a populist campaign, helped along by the billionaire owner of the network that broadcast SofP, comparing Zelensky with Ronald Reagan. After all, Reagan made movies with chimpanzees, and presided over the breakdown of the Berlin Wall.

Read The New Yorker's view in 2019 of Zelensky as unserious.
Today, the New York Times indicates impressions have changed into a Churchillian figure, a personal embodiment of his country's refusal to yield to a murderous authoritarian.
Remains in Kyiv visiting hospitals and taping speeches, even though spies are trying to kill him.
Is an actor who understands that he has a role to play, and will play that role, symbolizing something larger than himself.

"We will not give up and we will not lose. We will fight until the end at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost," he said in his comments translated by an interpreter, echoing some of Churchill's words.

From CNN, Zelensky is like the lone protester in Tiananmen Square and Davy Crockett at the Alamo. They both did not survive, but in any event, Zelensky will go down in history as a democratic martyr, and maybe survive, for one story is that the China Tank Man might have found his way to Taiwan.

March Madness is here, which means you can fill out your brackets to win a truck. 68 teams on both the women's and men's NCAA championship begin, with March Madness ending in April. Who already remembers that Stanford won the women's and Baylor the men's last year. Hawaii plays Baylor in round one, and will lose, but this will be in the women's bracket. For a while Baylor was the best, and former 6' 9" star Brittney Griner apparently is still detained in Russia.

About yourself participating in filling out these brackets, like the CBS Sports version above, here are a few more that are also free. The most enticing FREE game is BETMGM $10 million bracket challenge. All you need to do is be perfect. But if no one does that, the highest score still wins $100,000.

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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