WHEN WILL WE REACH 8 BILLION PEOPLE?

Sorry for being a little late today. I went to Shimazu Shave Ice and had a Ling Hing Mui flavored shave ice, topped with condensed cream...for $7.

Looking at the Worldometer data of yesterday, Japan remains #1 with 230,555 new cases. The USA is #2 at 99,061. The pandemic epicenter has shifted from Europe to Asia/Oceania. Ranking of major countries in terms of new cases/million population:

#1 Japan 1831
#2 Australia 1733
#3 South Korea 1660
#4 New Zealand 1579
#6 Singapore 1335
#7 Taiwan 974
#8 Italy 909
#9 Austria 831
#10 Germany 783

The average for the U.S is 296 new cases/million.

Most think global warming is our biggest problem. Over-population is also way up there as a concern. According to the United Nations, the World will hit a population of 8 billion on November 15.

The World reached 7 billion in 2011.
Our global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, increasing at a rate of less than one percent growth rate/year.

Fertility in two-thirds of the world is now below 2.1 births/woman, roughly a level for zero growth rate. This was 4.5 in mid-70's.
The COVID-19 pandemic dropped global life expectancy at birth from 72.9 in 2019 to 71 last year.
But longevity is expected to rise to 77.2 in 2050.
More than half of the projected population increase will come from eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and Tanzania.

By 2050, there will be twice the number of those 65 years and older than children under 5, and about the same as those up to 12 years old.
World Population day was July 11. No one seemed to have cared.

World growth:

It took hundreds of thousands of years for the world to reach 1 billion in 1804.

While this is controversial, the eruption of Mount Toba dropped our population to as low as 1000 breeding pairs, possibly all in Africa, which is why we all have original roots from that continent. This eruption was 12 times greater than the largest in recent history, which was Mount Tambora, Indonesia in 1815. This is Lake Toba today.

Then by 10,000 BC, our population grew to somewhere between 1 and 15 million.

From 1 billion in 1804 it took 207 years to reach 7 billion.
Maybe 10 billion in 2058?
2100? Perhaps 11 billion.

What is the optimal population of Planet Earth?

In 1994 when the world population was 5.6 million, Paul Ehrlich and his colleages said 1.5 to 2 million.
Then in 2021 Sir Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University said: from half to 5 billion.
In both cases, the matter of limited resources was why. From Dasgupta:

Finally, humans versus others.

If a virus was the size of a 5 cent coin, a bacterium would be about the size of a dinner plate, and Danny Devito would be 656,168 feet tall.
Viruses more than a quadrillion quadrillion.

About one nonillion, which is 1 followed by 30 zeroes.
Ten times more than all the bacteria.

Ants perhaps 1 quadrillion, which is 1000 trillion or 1 million billion.
Cockroaches up to 3 trillion.
Chickens 26 billion.
Humans 8 billion.
Cattle 1 billion.
Pigs 0.8 billion.
Blue whales, the largest creature ever--somewhere between 10,000 and 25,000.
Northern White Rhinos 2 (yes, two, both female)

Finally, there are 550 gigatons of carbon life in the world. Of that humans are only 0.06 GTC. All the bacteria are 1,166 times more massive. Another way of looking at this is that humans make up just 1/10,000th of Earth's biomass. We are virtually insignificant.

From National Geographic:

A dazzling, multicolored cuticle. A shiny chitinous armor. Photos taken with a microscope lens reveal the hypnotic beauty of the critters we usually dismiss as bugs. These colors come from chitin, a substance that forms an insect’s hard outer covering as well as its wings and other flexible parts. The chitin, which has been in arthropods for as long as 550 million years, is behind the metallic-colored scales of the Chrysiridia butterfly’s wings, or the thousands of lenses in a hornet’s compound eye.

You can have a ringtail cat as a pet.

Blood Lily at 10 days:

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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