HOW SAFE IS FLYING?

I yesterday posted on how COVID is changing. To conclude, Time magazine reported on The New Vaccines to Get in 2024:

This week the CDC provided their new guidelines on everything from COVID-19 to the flu to chickenpox.
There is a new updated COVID vaccine targeting the Omicron variant XVV.15, which protects against evolving strains like the JN.1 variant.

This version is now responsible for more than half on U.S. cases.
JN.1 is more infectious or severe than other SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Anti-vaccine sentiment is on the rise in the country.

Much of this resistance comes from Republicans.
In fact, two years ago it was revealed that Donald Trump, through his policies when president, killed more than 400,000 Americans!!!
However, attitudes today reflect a broader avoidance, as only 20% of U.S. adults got the previous latest booster.

Vaccinated individuals are four times likelier to AVOID LONG COVID!
The good common sense today is to still wear masks in public.
The federal government has not returned to mandates to allow people to better enjoy life.

This might be a mistake.
According to Ashish Jha, who served as the White House COVID-19 response coordinator from 2022-2023: For a lot of people it's been about, 'How do we go back to 2019, to life before the pandemic?'" But, in his view, that's not the right goal: "We actually want to look forward."

Now on to the posting of today. With all the brouhaha about the exploding door plug and the Boeing 737 being responsible for 346 deaths in Indonesia (2018) and Ethiopia (2019), ever wonder how safe it is to fly? And, by the way, these airlines fly the Boeing 737 Max 9.

The thought of being ensconced in a speeding bullet does give me pause. A jetliner moves along at around 550 miles per hour, while a handgun like a .38 special has a muzzle velocity of 590 MPH. However, a 28 mm can go up to 1387 MPH and a .357 Magnum up to 968 MPH.

Regarding planes, there is one death for every 10 billion miles traveled. Train travel has 4 deaths for that distance. From 1982 to 2018, the world has had 2253 plane crashes and 1290 deaths/year. Or, 47,000 deaths in that period. More than half of crashes occur on landing and takeoff.

Sure looks like a lot of crashes, but scheduled commercial flights were responsible only for around 10% of them. Wikipedia reports 83,772 air deaths since 1970, and Statista shows this graph from 1942 to 2015.

So you say, yikes, flying is dangerous. Well, compared to what? How's this?

Remember that air travel kills 0.1/billion miles.

Certainly don't skydive, for that's 7,500 deaths/billion miles. You would think that the following graphic might seem like this is safe. But, no.

Motorcycles kill at a 1,640/billion mile rate.
Your car is 400 times worse than air travel.
Just walking equals a car.
In case you wanted to be an astronaut: 17,000,000 deaths/billion miles.

But you say, air travel goes far, and other modes, less so. Yes, true. Bus travel leads with 4.3 deaths/journey. But the distance is short.

Bus 4.3
Rail 20
Foot 40
Car 40
Air 117

Deaths/billion hours:

Bus 11.1
Rail 30
Air 30.8
Car 130
Motorcycle 4840

So in different ways, bus and train travel pretty much are close to air safety in travel safety.

However, air travel is getting safer.

Here are the safest airlines:

Air New Zealand
Qantas
Virgin Australia
Etihad Airways
Qatar Airways
Emirates
All Nippon Airways
Finnair
Cathay Pacific Airways
Alaska Airlines
SAS
Korean Air
Singapore Airlines
EVA Air
British Airways
Turkish Airlines
TAP Air Portugal
Lufthansa/Swiss Group
KLM
Japan Airlines
Hawaiian Airlines
American Airlines
Air France
Air Canada Group
United Airlines

What has happened to United Airlines?

All in all, air travel is relatively safe. Plus you can't go around the world in a bus. However, if it's a longer life you want, go on a cruise, it's ten times safer than air.

According to research compiled by the Daspit Law Firm, cruise ships have the lowest rate of deaths per billion passenger miles with 0.08. Compare that to 11.9 for rail travel, 3.3 for cars and trucks and 0.8 for commercial air, and traveling on the seas is a relatively safe venture.

Thus, on our next trip, we are going around the world, incorporating three cruises to integrate with air travel. I close with some dancing.

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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