THE LAHAINA APOCALYPSE

The WiFi in my building was down all day. The recovery was unusually grueling, as an info tech specialist had to come to my apartment to personally adjust every device to re-connect.

So, anyway, late, but I'm back, and will just send you to the Star Advertiser to read what happened in Lahaina. Two extraordinary statistics:

The fatalities are now up to 67 and could get higher, for perhaps a thousand are still missing, although most are probably alive but unaccounted for so far. This was the second most wildfire deaths in the USA in the past century. The 2018 Camp Fire in California, which destroyed the towns of Paradise and Concow, was the worst, with 85 deaths. Interestingly enough, the highest death toll of 1152 came from the Wisconsin Peshtigo fire of 1871.

Lahaina became the #1 deadliest state natural disaster. #2 was the 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people in Hilo. Actually, there was a deadlier tsunami in 1946 when 150 on the Big Island was killed by another tsunami, but Hawaii was not yet a state.

Day 8 of my African Blood Lily bloom. In a few days there will be 19 blossoms.

Typhoon Lan went up to 130 MPH today, but is expected to weaken to Category 1 strength when he makes landfall over Japan on Monday. The current projection is just about where Mikimoto did his pearl experiments. The eye will then pass to the west of Nagoya. However, a lot can change in three days.

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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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