WILL THE WORLD WILL REACH 8 BILLION PEOPLE TODAY?

Did you know that only 2.3 billion people live in a democracy? That's 29% of 8 billion. Donald Trump wants to lower this number by a few more percent.

One thing about the global population is that no one knows for sure. So will the number of people reach 8 billion today? No, we're already past that number. Time magazine says the world will reach 8 billion on January 1: WORLD POPULATION UP 75 MILLION THIS YEAR, STANDING AT 8 BILLION ON JAN. 1.

Officially, the United Nations announced that 8 billion was reached in mid-November of last year.

On 30 July 2022 my posting reported that the world would reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022.
Then on 19 November 2022, I confirmed that the world hit 8 billion on 15 November 2022. This number and date were announced by the United Nations Population Division.
Watch Rachel Snow of the United Nations Population Fund on November 11 make this video about reaching 8 billion.

AP also came out with the same announcement as Time, citing the U.S. Census Bureau.

Actually, if you look very closely at the right graphic, and do the math, the Census Bureau actually said 8 billion was reached on September 23, 2023. So the Time citation of January 1, 2024 was wrong.
Further, AP indicated that the UN actually declared 22 November 2022 as the Day of 8 Billion.
AP also said that this discrepancy is due to countries counting people differently...or not at all. India and Nigeria, for example, have not conducted a census in over a decade.
Some other details.

The current global median age is now 32.
But this number will jump to 39 in 2060 because people will be living longer.
The minimum number of births to remain at the current population is 2.1/female. Almost 75% of people now live in countries with a fertility rate at that number. The only countries with a fertility rate above 5 are in Africa.

So what is the correct answer about when the world population reached 8 billion? Probably at some point between 15 November 2022 and 23 September 2023.

Interesting that the UN in 2012 summarized 65 different maximum sustainable sizes, and the most common figure was 8 billion. Paul Ehrlich, author of Population Bomb in 1968, a half century later in 2018 thought that there was a near certainty that our civilization would collapse within decades at 8 billion. He and his wife Anne (who was a co-author of that seminal book) thought this number should be between 1.5 billion and 2 billion. Then last year, the Ehrlichs, with other experts, stated that the sustainable level of our human population at between 2 and 4 billion. So by current consensus, we have too many people trying to survive on Planet Earth.

Worldometer, my source for those years of Covid-19 data, has a page showing the world population at 8.082 billion, changing by +2.4 every second. A few other bits of information.

Books published this year at 2.8 million, with a new one every 10 seconds.
Internet users in the world today at 6 billion.
Overweight people in the world at 1.7 billion.
Communicable disease deaths this year at 13 million.
44.6 million abortions so far this year.
45 million HIV/AIDS infected people in the world.
392,674 deaths by malaria this year.
Just a little more than a million suicides in the world this year.
1.344 million road traffic fatalities this year.

That's Nigeria above the USA, and Pakistan just below.

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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