SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY

First of all, no doubt the White House had a heavy hand, but the East/Gulf Coast dockworkers strike of 45,000 union members reached an agreement, with these workers getting a 62% increase in pay. This was the first stoppage since 1977. Whew, for the Democrats on November 5. Details worked out? Well, no, for the negotiators will return to the bargaining table on 15January2025 to iron-out any outstanding issues. Surely sounds like a nice political solution. Credit President Joe Biden. He today appeared on the regular White House Press Conference and also underscored the economic success of the administration. Looks like our economy will mostly look good for voters through November 5, with inflation downtrending and unemployment low.

Aside from the economy, one matter Donald Trump and JD Vance keep talking about is immigration. More specifically, that immigrants are committing crimes. Sure, some do, but the more immigrants the lower the crime rate. From the New York Times.

Otherwise, the Kamala Harris / Tim Walz campaign keeps rolling along. Yesterday, it was Liz Cheney giving them a boost. Next week, Barack Obama joins Harris

About election day and fraud, one way Trump can win is by outright crookery. Ironic that he keeps bringing this subject up. Surely enough, today, a Republican elections official got a 9 year prison sentence in Colorado for tampering with voting machines in the 2020 election. Since then, AI has entered the picture, and I would not be surprised if Trump MAGA supporters try some kind of deepfake surprise or two. What is that? Read this. All that on top of what is going on in Georgia and other states. You never ever hear of Democrats being dishonest. What's wrong with Republicans today? Yeah, I know....Donald Trump.

Finally, the horror of Hurricane Helene:

The death toll is past 222, and will keep rising.
At one point, 4.5 million were without power, which is now below a million.
After all that, yellow-jackets are now swarming in North Carolina.
And, yes, Republicans are lying about the ineptitude of the White House in aiding victims.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY is the title of my blog, and the most recent three books I have published.

I'm not sure how many people have really visited this blog site, for a decade or so ago I stopped paying Google to count the clicks. However, what remained was a total viewership, which today is approaching 3.25 million. Plus, I counted the flags, and 221 domains have visited me. Interestingly enough, for this past week, there were more viewers from Singapore than the USA. (About the following, sorry, don't know what is in that box, and I can't get rid of it.)


Singapore	5,011
United States	2,253
India	174
Russia	95
Canada	61
United Kingdom	15
Japan	10
Pakistan	5
Germany	4
Other

Singapore

5.01K

United States

2.25K

India

174

Russia

Canada

United Kingdom

Japan

Pakistan

Germany

I looked at the daily visits from around the globe, and a typical day has visitors from around a hundred countries. During the past two months, the low was 54, with a high on August 29 of 187 domains. The title was DONALD TRUMP AND THE COVID PANDEMIC. He gave himself an A+ for handling the pandemic, but was credited with killing 400,000 Americans for his gross mishandling of the crisis. And he could well become the next president again.

For your information, the difference between countries (there are 195) and domains (242) is that the latter includes places like Antarctica and various small locations. 22 have not yet visited this site. Do me a favor: click on that and ask any contact of yours to read this blog. Among those are Christmas Island, Nauru, North Korea and Vatican City. Would be nice to reach all 242 domains.

We are off on another monumental journey next Wednesday, so for the next few days I will focus on travel. Then the trip itself will be for nearly two months, mostly cruising from Seattle, through the Panama Canal, and on to Southhampton, UK. Then we fly to Amsterdam to catch a Viking Christmas Cruise to Budapest. We stop by Zurich, then home to Honolulu on December 7.

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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