BOOKS ON THE COVID PANDEMIC

News flash! An American moon landing is schedule for today, our first in more than half a century. Watch Odie on your news channels. To quote:

Experts have made the analogy that landing on the moon is as difficult as teeing off a golf ball in New York and aiming for a small hole in Los Angeles.

I woke up yesterday to see Dr. Paul Offit being interviewed on MSNBC's Morning Joe. He had just written Tell Me When It's Over, a new book on the COVID-19 Pandemic.

A National Geographic publication.
Has written 13 books and published more than 150 papers on medicine.
Co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.
Advisor to the FDA and CDC.
Written like a Q&A, an insiders perspective on the pandemic, a hindsight look at where we were, are and heading.
So what do we do now?
Here is a complete review of Offit's book.

But you say, I've had it with the pandemic, and I just want it to go away. Unfortunately, it won't, and just last week I added to my iPhone 14 Days,

Organized by Authors Guild as a collective effort.
Guild President Douglas Preston is co-editor with Margaret Atwook.
36 co-authors contributed: Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Jennine Capó Crucet, Joseph Cassara, Angie Cruz, Pat Cummings, Sylvia Day, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Maria Hinojosa, Mira Jacob, Erica Jong, CJ Lyons, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Mary Pope Osborne, Doug Preston, Alice Randall, Caroline Randall Williams, Ishmael Reed, Roxana Robinson, Nelly Rosario, James Shapiro, Hampton Sides, R. L. Stine, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Monique Truong, Scott Turow, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rachel Vail, Weike Wang, De’ Shawn Charles Winslow and Meg Wolitzer.

From The Guardian:

Fourteen Days may take its cue from Boccaccio’s Decameron, the 14th-century compendium of stories ostensibly told by a group of fugitives from the Black Death, whose structure and ambition has been wildly influential, but there are marked differences. Notably, as this novel’s foreword from the Authors Guild Foundation notes, Boccaccio’s storytellers had escaped to the countryside; here, the principals are stuck in a city from which the wealthy and privileged have quickly fled, and in whose streets and avenues the surging noise of humanity has been replaced by the wail of sirens bearing the sick and dying to rapidly filling hospitals.

Not sure when this was done, but Blinklist ranks the best 21 pandemic books.

#1 On Immunity, Eula Biss: all about why people do and avoid vaccinations. Not sure why this would be #1, for it was written in 2015.
#2 Missing Microbes, Martin Blaser: explores the strange and microscopic world inside your guts. Okay, something is wrong with this list, for it was published in 2014.
Forget Blinklist.

Here are some cartoons about COVID-19. I start with RFK Jr. because he is a certified idiot.

A few others.

Can you believe there are 1148 Trump cartoons? Here is just one.

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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