ON WAR, COVID AND KING TRUMP

Status of the two prominent wars:

• Peace on the Gaza Strip.  How will it be possible for any kind of treaty, for the goal of Israel and the U.S. is to eliminate the Hamas from this site, with they being the other participant in the negotiations?  At least President Trump's off the wall solution for the USA to gain control is one possible solution for a longer peace.  What he did was set the terms so ridiculously against the Hamas, that some other Middle East country might be able present a more logical pathway to a longer peace.

• 
  On the Ukraine War, with President Trump so anti-Ukraine (he said Ukraine started the war and Zelensky is a dictator, while blackmailing the country to give us their rare minerals or else), no doubt Russia will get what it will want for peace.  Meaning holding on to winning territory and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.  Trump is also upset at many NATO nations not allocating sufficient funds to the Organization, and in this he is right, for the war is, after all, in Europe.

About mid-air collisions, did you know there was another one yesterday in Arizona, with two deaths.  Remember that Delta plane flip in Toronto?  The airline will give $30,000 to each surviving passenger, and they are all alive, with the 21 taken to a hospital now discharged.

During and after the pandemic, COVID-19 dominated my Thursday postings

• The World Health Organization declared COVID to be a pandemic 11March2020.
• Read a CNN article published that day.
• The U.S. only had a total of 1,016 cases across 43 states.  The death toll was 31, or a mortality rate of 3%.
• They lied, but Mainland China that day only reported 15 new cases, with six imported from outside the country.  How do I know they made this all up?  Well almost two months previously, they reported 2000 new cases/day.  With 3169 deaths, the mortality rate was 4%.
• 
  Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive and the NBA suspended their season.
• President Donald Trump stopped all travel from Europe.  A headline showed he was confident that the U.S. would expeditiously defeat the coronavirus.  He made Jared Kushner his chief advisor for this disease.
• 
  I extracted data from Worldometer.  Here is what the site looks like today:
• The first graphic occurred on 14March2020 with 17,688 new cases in the world.
• By July 24, the tally was 294,785 new cases/week.
• The first real peak did not occur 8January2021 with 829,012 new cases that day.
• Global cases then declined, reaching a low of 285,900 on 22February2021.
• The second peak occurred on 29April2021 with 903,574 new cases.
• Then a drop to 305,794 on 20June2021,
• A third peak on 8August22021 at 738,859.
• 
  So the pandemic was declining?  Nope.  Winter came, and the highest peak ever was attained on 21January2022 of 8 million new cases.  (The horizontal column is in terms of new cases/million population.)
• But a steep decline to 336,614 new cases, more than a factor of 10 drop, on 2May2022.
• Pandemic over?  Nope, for just in three months, on 12July2022, the world new cases number jumped to 1.2 million.
• There was decline to 295,531 on 16October2022.
• 
  But there was worry about the winter rise.  Did so occur, for the number of new cases rose to 743,188 on 13December2022.
• Finally, finally, a gradual decline to 28,167 on 12June2023, followed by a tick up to 91,047 on 9August2023, drop to 30,792 on 6November2023, small jump to 172,353 on 12December2023 and decline to 12,937 on 22March2024.
• Worldometer than converted to weekly trends, and the latest week showed 45,737 (653 new cases/day) cases the past week, with 363 (52 deaths/day).
• Winton Centre Cambridge compared COVID deaths and other causes in England and Wales during the summer of 2020.

• 
  According to a CDC spokesperson (on 12February2025 in the USA), the week ending on Jan. 25 was the first time the percentage of deaths due to the flu was higher than the percentage of deaths due to COVID. That week, 1.7% of deaths reported were due to the flu, while 1.5% of deaths were due to COVID.  
• Further, the flu mortality rate for this period was 0.05%.  
• The world mortality rate of COVID-19 is just about 1%.
• Thus, you are 620 times more likely to die from COVID than the flu if you get infected by them.
• As of today, total number of COVID-19 deaths.
• #1      USA  1,219,487
• #2      Brazil  711,380
• #3      India  533,570
• #10    France  167,642
• #91     CHINA  5,272
• #100  Uganda  3,632
• Deaths per million population.
• #1      Peru  6,595
• #2      Bulgaria  5,661
• #3      Hungary  5,106
• #14    USA  3,642
• #100  Honduras  1,092
• #221  China  4
• Clearly, some countries hid COVID deaths. 
•  China?  Only 5,272 deaths?  Ridiculous.  Emerging Infectious Diseases estimates that 1.41 million COVID-19 deaths just the 35 day period around December 2022 when China ended its zero-COVID policy.  From the New York Times:

• The World Health Organization suspects that more than 4.7 million people died in India, nearly 10 times higher than official records.
• While Worldometer and most authorities indicate that around 7 million died from COVID-19 worldwide, the World Health Organization reports that the actual death total is closer to 21 million deaths!

I only follow ice hockey during the winter olympics.  However, as some might know, there is a 4-nation tournament now being held, and the American team is not very popular when they play in Canada.  The other two countries are Finland and Sweden.  The finals featuring Canada vs USA will be held tonight in Boston on ESPN, with free streaming on FUBO.

To close, I've said so many times, too, but Donald Trump actually X'd a posting of him as KING.

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