Skip to main content

ON TO SAKATA

 It is Friday in Japan, so this must still be Thursday in the USA.  I've bypassed anything linked to Covid for weeks because it is not newsworthy enough these days.  However, thought I'd touch on it today.  First, though, a few other topics:

  • It is becoming clear what new Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican House will be doing, for they are now cherry-picking topics to support their priorities, while insisting that the budget be balanced with cuts to the IRS now, and social programs later, to pay for necessary expenditures.  Both the White House and the Senate scoff at this tactic.  Read the details.
  • Covid cases in the last 7 days/million population.
    • #1  Niue  1233
    • #2  Lithuania  945
    • #3  New Zealand  479
    • #15  USA  134
  • Covid cases during the past week.
    • World  149,570
    • #1  USA  44,734
    • #2  Brazil  31,593
    • #3  Russia  25,983
    • However, many countries just don't report anymore.

Japan is one of those countries where Covid has disappeared from the media.  The Japan Times has a list of relevant articles, and the most recdent one was on October 27, entitled, Tokyo promotes awareness of children's Covid-19 aftereffects.  However, in most indoor venues, more than half are still wearing masks.

So what remains relevant about Covid today.? Well, you can still get infected, and if you do, Pfizer is now charging $1400/series.  However, your medical plan should cover it.

About our cruise, we took a cab from our ship to the Aomori Prefecture's iconic building, a pyramidal tourist center.

The tourist center had a nice Japanese restaurant at the top, from where you can see our ship.
I had a beef dish with cold beer and hot sake.
A truly wonderful meal, except that we would have eaten something maybe better for free on the ship,  We then decided to walk back to the Diamond Princess.  Huge mistake because one was in a wheel chair and other can't see well.  There were half a dozen series of stairs, and one portion under repair which was treacherous.  First photo of fall colors.
We got back to ship and met for early evening cocktails,  Tried a blended gin martini, which was best consumed with a spoon.  However, unlike a margarita, the ice seem to have totally neutralized the taste of the gin.
Next to The Savoy for dinner,
I worked around an Osso Bucco.
Forgot what this dessert was called.
Next, karaoke singing,
The closed up the disco to end the evening.
Got up to 13,891 steps today, my highest ever in one day.

-

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 a...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 suspicio...
Post a Comment
Read more

IS FLORIDA AGAIN THREATENED BY A MEGA TSUNAMI FROM LA PALMA?

 From the morning  New York Times : Here is a graph comparing average daily COVID-19 deaths/100,000 people, and the USA is doing something really wrong: The difference between our country and Europe is that we have flubbed the availability of cheap and ubiquitous at-home RAPID testing.  They have covered this base. There are two obvious problems: The FDA is much too bureaucratic about quickly approving anything related to this pandemic, including testing. We seem stuck with the test that takes one to several days to get your result. The good news is that the Biden administration has finally realized this problem and through executive order hope to soon flood the market with take home testing that at first will be subsidized to make it affordable. Now, on to getting everyone vaccinated, especially 5-11 years olds ( and we are close to getting to making this happen ), the undereducated and Republicans.  What to do about the latter two? The other concern is whether we a...
Post a Comment
Read more