Some weekly   Worldometer   info on COVID-19: Deaths over the past 7 days. World  1913 #1    Brazil  243 #2    Germany 223 #3    USA  209 #4    Russia  183 #5    France  155 Deaths in the past 7 days per million population. World  0.24 #1    New Zealand  11 #2    Hong Kong  11 #3    Martinique  5 #4    Greece  4 #5    Denmark  4 #11  S. Korea  2 #17  Brazil  1 #23  USA  0.9 Worried about long covid?  At one time as high as one-third of people who got infected were suspected of suffering this symptomatic fallout.  However, a  recent study seems to show that only 10% now suffer from this ailment .  Part of the reason is that the subvariants from Omicron to the present are not as troublesome.  Now that the pandemic has been declared over,  what was the cost of covid?   Seems like an uncalculable task, but Jakub Hlávaka (top photo) and Adam Rose of CREATE ( University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergency ) made an attempt. First, th

You by now must know that GOAT is the Greatest Of All Time.  But  BOAT:  The Brightest of All Time ? Last October telescopes spotted a gamma ray burst, which is caused by the collapse of a black hole.  These also occur when two black holes or neutron stars collide.  This phenomenon is focused along a narrow beam.  If you happen to be in the path, you could be in trouble. One of Humanity's most serious possible extinction evenf could well be a gamma ray burst. However, Planet Earth is so far away from such things that astronomers don't much worry about that, especially as the odds of this beam heading exactly our way are very low. Yet, astronomers detect about a burst a day, and these are only the ones heading in our general direction, which is a small percentage of all GRBs in the Universe. The calculation is that an extinction GRB happens once every five million years, but not on here. Possibly, a GRB with this potential could have occurred about 450 million years ago. Well, t