A coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, China in December 2019.   We were on the Diamond Princess  in the Orient that month .  Came back to Hawaii.   However this same ship on 20January2020 boarded an 80-year old passenger from Hong Kong with a respiratory ailment, and started the international spread.   The Diamond Princess on 3February2020 returned to Yokohama, but had to anchor at sea, for a strange new disease seemed to be spreading. Unknowingly,  we flew from Honolulu to Bangkok, Thailand on 11February2020 . That day the World Health Organization announced the official name for this virus would be COVID-19, CO for corona, VI for virus, D for diseases and 19, the year (2019) it was first discovered. Ultimately, with 2,666 passengers and a crew of 1,045, 712 became infected, with 14 deaths.  Interestingly enough, 20% of the people on the ship were infected, and of those, 2% died.  So far, in the world, there have been 704,753,890 ...

Looking back in time, my  posting on 28February2020  summarized my return from Thailand: The fearsome factor was that Thailand had the second-most cases of   covid-19   when I left Honolulu on February 12.  Today, it is #9.  No new cases appeared after I arrived in that country.  No one is known to have died. (Interestingly enough, today  Thailand  is #33 in total cases and #143 in cases/million population.) But on  11 March2020 the World Health Organizaton declared the coronavirus to be a global pandemic .   This was the first time that a pandemic was caused by a coronavirus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1200 points, the worst since 2008.  The eleven year bull market came to an end. China and Italy were locked down. Tom Hanks posted on Instagram that he and his wife Rita Wilson had contracted this virus.  They were in Australia. Two Utah Jazz players tested positive and the NBA canceled the rest of the se...

This was a good year.  Avoided COVID.  Am at the best  Body Mass Index  in at least the past quarter century.  I've never been, as such, fat.  Well, maybe when I was around 1 year old.  But to the present. I saw 146.8 pounds on the scale a couple days ago.  My BMI is thus 23.0, just above average in the optimal green category. My weight before the pandemic was 165, or a BMI of 25.8, in the overweight category. Through a strict vegetable and little solid carbohydrate diet, with few snacks and almost no dessert, my weight dropped to 154, a BMI of 24.1, which placed me just in the optimal category. I just returned from a  five-week trip , including a 21-day Regent Seven Seas Explorer cruise, and saw 155.4 pounds, a BMI of 24.3, still barely in the optimal category.  But the amazing thing is that I thought I had gained at least 6 pounds, for I ate and drank a lot.  Too much. The solution, I determined, was a lot of sleep . True, we rema...