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which the wealthy and privileged have quickly fled, and in whose streets and avenues the surging noise of humanity has been replaced by the wail of sirens bearing the sick and dying to rapidly filling hospitals.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.

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...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

THE FIRST 84 YEARS OF MY LIFE

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years. This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition. I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts. The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an 8-iron cover. That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday. I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84. As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....

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